Help "Stay the Course"

A friend of mine said something to me this morning that led me to write the following letter to the editor. Feel free to use the ideas. - Garrett, many thanks!

Dear Editor,

It is upsetting to have people refer to those of us who are against the Iraq War as “cut and run” cowards. So let’s see if our critics are willing to show they have the “right stuff.”

For those who want to “stay the course” and are young enough (have you noticed many of the Reservists and National Guard are in their forties and fifties?), please volunteer and join up now to help the surge so you can get the victory and stay on as peace keepers as long as the President wants you there.

For those who are too old for military service, let me urge you to call Halliburton and any of the other defense contractors who are operating in Iraq to volunteer to help with anything from serving food to our soldiers to repairing the electrical grid. We’ve only lost 800 civilian workers compared to the 3600-3700 soldiers. Compared to the 23,000 soldiers who died during the period when President Nixon and Henry Kissinger agreed in 1971 to postpone ending the Viet Nam War so Nixon could be re-elected in 1972 as a wartime President (see Robert Dallek’s book NIXON AND KISSINGER), you as a pro-war volunteer would be practically as safe there as you would be here.

If you are really for this war, there are ways you can go to Iraq and do something about it.

What makes Bush tick?

I could never win an argument with Jack, my older brother. He was a staunch conservative and loved to bait me on social and political issues. It always took me awhile to get my thoughts and facts together and by then, the argument was over.

He finally let me know the secret of his success. "When I saw you were ready to pounce, I changed the subject," he told me.

One would think I'd learned that lesson by the time I was fifty but I needed him to tell me. He was always a little smarter than me.

This little vignette might help us understand the character and mode of operation of President George W. Bush. But first, let's review the most common understandings.

Some have been taken in by his abominable use of language and presumed he was not very bright. The man passed courses at Yale and Harvard and flew jet planes so he is not a dim bulb. He used his "dumb" act as cover to tweak the eastern elites and stake out a niche for himself. And he tweaks the educated on purpose by his verbal devices, like "nuculer." I don't think he can change now. I don't think he would ever want to. He feels it makes him sound "common" as opposed to elitist that he is.

The device also gives cover to his agenda. No one expects any high sophistication from him when he comes across as a brush clearing buddy.

Some are sure the President is a front man for VP Cheney and powerful corporate interests much as he was when he was made owner of the Texas Ranger baseball team. He was a delight to everyone as the face of the team while the real Dallas power brokers conducted the transactions that got special deals for the team out of the city fathers. Thus it seems that while he is the face of the Administration, the real power of it lies in the Vice President's office.

That image, though, may also be a smoke screen allowing people to dismiss the real man.

Some look at his background of drinking and drugs and wonder if those chemicals damaged his brain and caused some kind of dissociative disorder in which he could not recognize and respond to reality before making decisions. Michael Moore illustrated that kind of character when he showed the President on a golf course making a strong statement to the press against terrorism and immediately adding as he took his golf club, "Now watch this shot." Then showing the President leaning back in his golf cart with his legs crossed to follow his shot, Moore showed a man completely separated from the tragedy of the war. Who else but a dry alcoholic could seem to completely miss the message of the American people in the 2006 congressional elections?

If that were an act, it would be hard to sustain and actually manage anything. If he were truly dissociative, those close to him (think Laura, Karl Rove, certainly the ultimate cynic and master of expediency Dick Cheney) would have been long gone by now.

Some think the President is an eldest son in rebellion against his father. This one seems to draw the most support because as a Yalee like his dad, the President chose to carry on just the opposite of his dad: cheerleader instead of athlete, Texas "hick" instead of Connecticut privilege, modest grades instead of successful student. The biggest illustration of the rebellion could be seen in the President's refusing to take the Iraq Study Commission's recommendations. Jim Baker, his dad's surrogate in trying to help George Jr. out of the quagmire of Iraq, appears to have unintentionally pushed the President the other way.

One might think, then, that the only way to get the President to act reasonably would be to try to impose something so unreasonable that he would decide to do the opposite! Good old "reverse psychology" might work, if the President is the rebellious son he appears to be. There is no question the President goes against any pressure to do something most people feel is realistic. But is this what drives him?

Some wonder if he has a congenital or environmentally engendered sociopath tendencies where he is immune to conscience or the Christianity that he professes. Could someone who was normal be against stem cell research, be against helping children of the indigent and working poor get health insurance, preside over the death of a hundred prisoners without showing any mercy while governor of Texas, support the use of torture of prisoners of war, and ignore the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians, far more than who died under Saddam Hussein or in the attack of 9/11?

What else could explain such a horrendous record of a leader?

There is at least one other option.

Would you believe he is following a vision of leadership that has a degree of sophistication and acuity that no one person can successfully counter him? Would you accept that he has seen how to establish a politicized executive branch protected by a politicized judiciary that even a legislative branch in the hands of the other party could not successfully challenge?

Consider how effectively he has used my brother's tactic of changing the subject just when it appeared the opposition finally was about to force a change? By use of raising some fearful threat (real or "potential"), by doing something so outrageous that it changed the direction of everyones' thinking, by lying about what is going on, by claiming executive privilege and secrecy to cut off any further investigations, and by just refusing to cooperate without any legal grounds because he knows that justice is slow to come to fruit, our President has successfully put off anyone who got close to stopping him.

The smoke screens well laid, conducting so much business in secrecy, and the strategy of changing the subject working so well, the President has been able to enlist many powerful and financially strong leaders to support his efforts to help them enhance their own well being . . . financially. Manipulation of their greed has given the President a base which will sustain him for his eight years in office.

However, indomitable as his vision has been, two things have eroded his vision.

One is his own presumptuousness that he could keep control. It leaves a trail in the dust that will be traced and studied long after President Bush retires to his ranch. It disillusions many who were close to it as it operated. It demoralizes those who try to stop it. It motivates people of conscience to violate normal levels of loyalty and confidentiality in order to release word of what is really happening inside the Administration. Even the hand-fed mainstream media will sometimes balk despite its fear of losing favor and "unnamed sources." The President's mask slipped when he declared he was the "Decider."

The other is reality. Hurricanes blow or wash away all the covers of incompetence. A bureaucracy is lousy at keeping all things secret. Men and women with even a modicum of integrity are not always cowed by intimidation nor successfully silenced by "Medals of Freedom." Stories of those "on the ground" finally supersede the stories of the "civilians trying to run a war from Washington." Computer data does not just disappear into cyberspace; it is there somewhere - a reality not factored into the vision of governance when it was originally conceived. Even high sophistication has to deal in realities.

An open society has a chance to deal with that high level, misdirected as it is. So highly sophisticated that no one person has been able to stop the President, maybe the whole "village" with its accumulated wisdom and values may finally achieve that. Maybe it already has, thanks to term limits.

Shrewd as the President really is, he will hold on so he can retire in 2008.

What of his legacy?

This President will go down in history as having come the closest to establishing the "unitary executive" leadership pattern in the U. S. or, worse, will provide the model and stepping stone for another to finally succeed.

Iraq after the pullout

Everyone has an opinion and I'm going to see if I can formulate mine before your very eyes!

Iraq is more tribal than national. That means most Iraqis' first allegiance is to their clan. Their tribe tends to be related to an area of the land with deep historical roots and religious identity. Their affiliation with other Iraqi tribes was forced when European colonial powers mandated national boundaries with no serious regard for the tribal areas.

Someday, to stabilize the region, the United Nations needs to work with all of the Middle East to reset the boundaries to be more in tune with the regional tribal areas. The map needs to be redrawn to gain some coherence for establishing functional governmental units.

The nation of Iraq, except when its central government has been autocratic, holds together only the more secularized and urbanized Iraqis who have interaction with the the rest of the world and who may have been educated outside Iraq.

Religious ties among the secular are mostly with the Sunnis. The tribal areas north and west of Baghdad are Sunni too but are not as secular nor have as much contact with the rest of the world.

The Kurds in the north are more secular and relate with much of the outside world because they have been able to use the wealth of the oil fields in their area and the distance from Baghdad to attain a good deal of autonomy. They are not Arabs like the Sunnis and Shia. Saddam tried to change out the population of Kirkuk with Sunnis from the Sunni triangle which has left that city particularly vulnerable to ethnic violence.

The Shia constitute the majority of the Iraqi population in the south. They also have concentrations in ghettos in Baghdad and some other northern cities. Oil is abundant in many Shia tribal areas though that wealth was not shared with them under Saddam.

The tribal leaders in each area have established their own militias for the purpose of maintaining order and discipline among their members. Those militias were operative under Saddam as long as they did not cross swords with him. He was not tolerant of them and used the army to suppress them and their tribes by force when necessary because he established his autocracy under the oppression of the colonial powers. His Baath party controlled the oil and the wealth and was the public face of the state of Iraq.

In this cursory sketch, I have laid out what I think are the most salient factors to give us a clue of what will happen when the US pulls out (we WILL leave as completely as we did from Vietnam and will have to find another way to "pay back" Iraq for the damage we've done).

The tribal leaders of all the ethnic groups have no desire to give up their authority to al Qaida, Iran, Syria, the United States, Saudi Arabia, or any government set up by our occupying military!

The Iraqi government will not meet the political benchmarks as long as we are there. They will not accept being a colony to have their oil wealth drained off by American corporations. They will have a hard time sharing that wealth with each other, especially since the Sunnis shared nothing with the Shia under Saddam.

As I see it, the Sunni tribes have retained some degree of their Baathist organization, politically and militarily, because it worked for them under Saddam. They have some affinity for al Qaida because al Qaida is more Sunni than anything. But they also see al Qaida as an outside force which would want to run things for their own purposes which the indigenous Sunnis do not share. Al Qaida will never be more than a means to an end for the Sunnis. - The current cooperation with the Americans is to help the Sunnis gain access to more arms for the showdown with the Shia when we leave, as well as to gain enough military strength to take on the Kurds who are well armed.

The Shia have control of the current central government and have the benefit of the American military equipment (we still don't give them body armor and adequate munitions to really establish themselves as an army or police force). They will become quite formidable when the Americans pull out because many of the Shia militias control much of the national army and police.

Muqtada al Sadr really is playing his own game, more so than the other tribal leaders. He is using Iran to strengthen his hand in Iraq much like al Qaida and the Sunnis are using Saudi Arabia and Syria (plus most of the other Arab states that tend to be Sunni) to strengthen their hands.

Muqtada al Sadr wants to take over Iraq but no one will let him. He knows it even if he has the largest most organized and disciplined militia. To have any say in the future of Iraq, he will have to cooperate. He will be used by the other Shia tribes to help hold off the Sunnis.

My opinion is that this leaves a "mutual destruction" situation which the tribal leaders will calculate to be too grave to carry through a fulfilled civil war. There will be a scramble for the military materiel left behind by our troops when they leave. Just as many insurgents went into the arms caches Saddam set up and we did not stop to destroy or guard, the competing forces will hope to get as much as they can. The Shia will have the best shot at most of it but I see the crime lords already calculating how to get to it first. The tribal leaders better talk about that during the August parliamentary break.

Most Iraqis do not want the occupation to continue. Among the Sunnis and Shia, those not closely tied to a tribe by virtue of becoming secular and relating to the outside world do not have militias unless they got money from somewhere (US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, moderate Arab nations) to hire Blackwater or some other mercenary group. They are the most likely to be run out or killed by the insurgents. Many have already left Iraq. The university people, doctors, bureaucrats, and business people leaving constitutes a major brain drain. The tribal leaders do not see them as crucial to their goals. As with Vietnam, many of those folks will leave when we do if they haven't already gone. Many will be killed.

Al Qaida in Iraq and al Qaida (international) are probably going to be less of a threat than the crime lords to settling things in the future. The crime lords have all those antiquities they've stolen and want to get onto the market. Al Qaida only wants bragging rights to build up their jihad against the West. The crime lords will see them as a rival gang.

As when India partitioned rather than go into a full civil war upon the British leaving, there will be displacement and bloodshed between the ethnic groups and between some of the tribes. As a state, Iraq has not raised up anyone with the political skills to pull off anything like a central government.

The tribal leaders are the key to resolving the political problems. Maybe the best gift we have given them is that we helped some of them get better acquainted by providing elections and then bringing many of them together in the parliament.

During the summer vacation, they will solidify their own positions, and then in September may well vote to ask the U. S. to leave, vote new leadership to replace the American-friendly lot that we've sponsored, and see if they can settle the dispersal of oil revenues.

The Bush Administration will not leave unless they can assure the Oil Companies they can deliver contracts to work the Iraqi oil fields. (That's really the only victory the President wants and will rename to something more grandiose if he gets it.) But the Iraqis will stall and continue to treat us the way the colonists treated the Redcoats, targeting US forces and trying to build up their own militias until we do leave.

We'd be there until a new administration in Washington with less owed to the Oil Companies takes over and lets the Iraqis resolve their own problems. If the new administration feels it necessary to stay with helping the Oil Companies, I see no hope for our relationships with the Middle East ever improving.

We have to get out.

The Iraqis will eventually resolve their differences. Iraq will probably partition along ethnic lines and find a way to pay off the Sunnis so they can establish their own economy without feeling they have to take over all of Iraq.

The crime lords and al Sadr are the most important flies in the ointment.

It would help if Saudi Arabia would cut off funding to al Quaida. They more probably would support whatever Sunni state evolves.

Iran is not really in a position to do much except stay on good terms with the Shia. President Ahmadinejad would not want to test his own popularity by interfering in Iraq. The Persians (Iranians) are not welcome among the Iraqi Arabs.

Al Qaida will make lots of PR over our leaving but the real joy will be that the insurgents of both Sunnis and Shia succeeded in pushing out the invaders who had trashed their homes in the middle of the night, imprisoned their men for years without grounds or justice, tortured them, killed them out of fear and prejudice, and tried to muzzle them when they spoke up.

Some would call letting all that happen chaos. I call it allowing the multiple forces to settle their own disputes and getting out of their way.

UNLESS PRESIDENT BUSH DECIDES TO INVADE IRAN . . .

UNLESS ISRAEL BOMBS IRAN'S NUCLEAR FACILITIES . . .

UNLESS THE WEST FORGETS THAT THE ISRAELI - PALESTINIAN CONTROVERSY IS YET TO BE RESOLVED . . .

Impeachment

Bill Moyers talked with Bruce Fein and John Nichols about impeaching Vice President Cheney and President Bush. The conversation was picked up from the PBS broadcast and posted on Crooks and Liars webblog.

Moyers described the use of impeachment as if it were an axe taken to the heads of state. The two constitutional scholars, one from the left and one from the right, both said that was not a true picture of impeachment.

They said that impeachment was a way for Congress and the American people to challenge the actions of the Administration and have the Senate then have the authority to remove them from office and replace them constitutionally. Neither man would be caused physical harm. Both could retire to their own "San Clementes" and not face any jail time. But it could mean the removal from office for the violations of the law of which they are guilty.

My argument has been that they will obfuscate and politicize the process to such an extent that it will take years to complete the process.

The Republicans had so cheapened and politicized the process when they used it on President Clinton that I can't blame the House leadership from taking impeachment off the table. But if we do not use the tool, it will rust and may never be used again. That means future Presidents will not feel threatened by it, the two argued.

Lindsay Graham has already given Congress the way to stop the war: end the funding. The investigations being held by Congress and the legislation being offered are other steps that do not appear to be as partisan as impeachment (in light of the Republican use of it).

Maybe we can't use impeachment in this generation. At least not without silencing the loud voices in the media who will scream and pout and twist and spin everything to make it look unfair and unbalanced.

How close can we let them drag us to a monarchy before we act? How willing are people to be cynical or to be unwilling to let the process work before they clamor back to Paris Hilton? Are the majority of us really willing to be sheep?

Democracy . . . ???

In the church, we wait out bad leadership by letting term limits take care of what nature does not. Who's got the time, energy, and willingness to actually hold leaders accountable?

Again, I have not come to any resolution over a major concern.

Live Earth Concerts

I like the concept behind Live Earth.

The effort was made to get individuals to change their life patterns toward a greener mode of being in the world.

If all two billion people who were supposedly touched by the 24 hour extravaganza did all seven things, that would be almost irrelevant to the overall changes required.

Or would it?

In the 1970s, we had a major energy crunch. The President got the highway speed limits dropped down to 55 mph, even on the Interstates. Drove westerners and Type A personalities crazy! The electric companies went on serious conservation campaigns to get people to turn off their lights, change to more energy efficient bulbs, and other simple things.

Suddenly, utilities were asking for rate increases because customers were using so much less energy their income was dropping precipitously. Gasoline prices dropped.

As people carry cloth grocery bags or use their own grocery carts; as they postpone shopping or library trips to other times when they are driving that way; as they collect water that went down the drain while waiting for hot water and use it for watering plants, washing hands, etc.; as they turn off electronic equipment which has instant on features; as they buy hybrid cars or use their bikes a lot more; there will be the impact of a thousand cuts on many corporations.

By this time next year, we will all know that people have changed. Corporations and utilities will be scrambling and trying to pass the costs on to us!

UMC is "top heavy"

This article was first written on June 18 and will be found there. But, thanks to UMNexus mentioning it, I figure it best to be sure it is on the first page my guests reach when they come to see it.

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I love the United Methodist Church and its "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" character.

Most people look at our inner turmoil and worry, since we are subject to the culture wars over homosexuality, that we will split. That partisan spirit could well divide our denomination in two.

Actually, one side of the controversy would never have come up with the six word character description I note above, though most are largely that way. Maybe that is what is holding us together.

What I do not hear anyone talking about is a much more destructive "party spirit" in our midst.

Far deeper and more difficult for our church is the power of those among the "bishop-wanna-be" party.

Although the majority of bishops are not members, enough of them run the Council of Bishops so that even the best bishops don't always stand up to them. The party is that strong.

Like many other institutions in America, our church is top heavy because of the success of that party.

They trump the ideological factions.

At our next "ecumenical council" (General Conference), they will be slick in their fight to keep as many bishops and other leaders supported in the style to which they have become accustomed. The costs are significant. Some say they are overwhelming.

Another area where we have become top heavy is in the power of bishops. One of the reasons that bishops have gone from being a personnel officer to a dominant administrative and judicial officer in our system is because of the bishop-wanna-be party.

They tend to be clergy who are ambitious, who have the knack of getting selected or elected to important jobs in the state (annual conference) or at the denominational (national) level.They know what powers they would like to have if they get to be bishop.They tend to be the ones who help draft church law to benefit the office of the bishop and put more power into bishops' hands.

Bishops are not supposed to have anything to do with the legislation handled by our quadrennial General Conference where we modify our Book of Discipline. But the bishops provide petitions to other agencies of our church who then put them into the legislative hopper. Because the bishop-wanna-bes are the ones most often elected to the General Conference, they see to it that those bishop-benefiting petitions are the only ones seriously considered for passage.While most delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences are not members of this dominating party, even a few of the lay delegates are. The bishop-wanna-be folks are most adept at operating in the rarefied milieu of those conferences. Most delegates don't even realize they've been manipulated.

Then the bishop-wanna-be party members, most of whom are also involved in the election of other bishops, practice all the politicking needed to help others of their number to be elected. Horse trading is a popular device among them because then in four years, it will be their turn to be elected.

Just to let you know the implications of this in-grown party structure, here is a glimpse at our way of handling complaints.

The bishop or one of his/her assistants, called "district superintendents," may by church law initiate a complaint against a pastor. I have seen some situations where the bishop or superintendent really had no written complaint containing specifics of time, place, and events alleged to have occurred. So the committees meant to handle the process have only the word of the bishop or superintendent and act as though it is true even without the written complaint.

The bishop, by church law, is the one who assigns pastors to their churches. So everyone on those committees will tend to not want the bishop mad at them for not cooperating and then remembering when the next large church opens up to which they might aspire. Committees like the Board of Ordained Ministry, Committee on Investigation, and such are working against their own future careers if they question or challenge something the bishop wants.

The bishop is the only one by church law who may nominate people to those committees. The bishop by church law selects the pastors who will be superintendents. The bishop by church law decides whether a complaint is to be sent into the judicial route which could end in a church trial. The bishop by church law selects the Counsel for the Church (the prosecutor). The bishop by church law picks the "judge" for any church trial. The superintendents by church law pick the jury for the church trials.

By church law, the bishop may also route a complaint of any kind (even serious sexual misconduct complaints whether true or false) into the committees of the Board of Ordained Ministry where there is no level of proof required in order to remove a pastor from ministry.

By church law, if a superintendent makes a mistake that causes harm to a local church or a pastor, he or she is accountable to the bishop and the other superintendents, not to the clergy of the conference as all other clergy are. By church law, if a bishop makes a mistake that harms a church or a pastor, she or he is accountable to a group of bishops in their region. They all make mistakes and are very forgiving toward their episcopal colleagues.

By church law, bishops and superintendents and members of the various committees they appoint who are responsible for handling complaints but make mistakes can only be held accountable if they are shown "by clear and convincing evidence, that such person's actions constituted a chargeable offense committed knowingly in bad faith." The same section of our church law also protects such officers from civil suit.

Shoot, all a Counsel for the Church has to prove to get a conviction against an accused pastor is achieve "clear and convincing" without having to prove "knowingly in bad faith."

So, we United Methodists face an immediate future in which the "bishop-wanna-be" party already has most of the cards in their hands to add further to their power. The one thing that they may not be able to handle is the rapidly rising costs of sustaining the levels of compensation, benefits, expenses, and housing to which they have committed us to pay.

As the General Conference of 2008 approaches, I wonder how many of the voices will still be around by May, 2008, who will remind the bishop-wanna-be party that they can't go on as they have.

Ah, power and privilege exemplified by the bishop-wanna-be party ignore the Golden Rule as Jesus gave it but rejoice in it as frequently stated by modern revisionists who say, "Them that's got the gold makes the rules!"

I still love our denomination but this party spirit sure is no help.

Hummers

As I watched an ad for the great American Hummer, I remember how it became so popular. It became the vehicle of choice for those who wanted to be able to get into the wilderness with their families in case of terrorist attacks, presuming terrorists would not follow them.

So what was a curiosity suddenly, as of 9/11, became a necessity for those who could afford them. GM went into full production of Hummers for the home market while their military supply was on its way to Iraq. After the roadside bombs began to destroy military Humvees and the soldiers in them, GM went into production of Hummer 2. They actually brought out Hummer 3 about the time Secretary Rumsfeld was made aware in a public press conference with the our troops in Iraq of "Hill Billy" armor the soldiers had rigged to give them added protection. Toe plates to protect Humvee riders from explosives coming up from beneath them were introduced in 2006. The full scale upgrade of armor finally began in late 2006.

Our kids were being put out on the roads in vehicles that had no serious armor at a time when the largest number of deaths and injuries were from roadside bombs. Meanwhile, those who could afford Hummers, had three sizes to buy at home.

I may be a little off about the specifics of Hummer production and armoring the Humvees in Iraq and for Iraq. And I can't blame the better-off for taking advantage of the premium vehicles available that would protect their families.

But somehow, when I see a Hummer, I want to vomit.

Impeach Cheney

I received another chance to sign a petition to subpeona the Vice President and if he fails to respond, to impeach him.

If there is anything this administration needs, its a nice trimming of the fourth branch to help the tree of state regain its health.

But when there is an attack on this administration, they circle the wagons and make it hard to do anything else but fight their parries and ploys.

Justice grinds slowly. I'm more inclined to want the Congress to try to undo the many things their predcessors and the administration have done the past six and a half years. There are too many matters being ignored that continue to benefit the powerful interests that got their way.

Like Barac Obama, I would leave impeachment for something so heinous that it could not be spun. Our experience watching the time and energy wasted during the Clinton impeachment nonsense should teach us to use that tool sparingly. There are better things to do.

On the other hand, I can see this administration pushing to attack Iran in order to protect Israel, even if Iran does not attack us.

This talk about Iran supplying insurgents is so unbalanced I could scream. Who is supplying the Al Quaeda and Sunni insurgency? Why isn't the press reminding everyone that there is that side (not long ago pegged as causing over 90 percent of our casualties) of the problem?

I figure it would take nearly two years to carry forward an impeachment proceeding. During that time, this administration could go ahead with bombing Iran anytime it wanted to.

So I won't sign the petition to impeach the Vice President. Hopefully, wise heads will do all they can to prevent the cataclism called for by the neocons and Joe Lieberman.

Scooter walks

The President, as expected, kept Scooter Libby out of jail. The long brief he enclosed with the commutation indicates they've been studying on the case and knew there might be a time when they'd have to pull it out.

Too bad the President's rationale did not have to be argued before the appeals court or before the judge who laid down the 30 month sentence. I wish someone at PBS or one of the networks talked with the judge, a conservative Republican to whom the President showed no loyalty.

Do you think that African American Republicans will give no thought to this event? But then, African Americans are not the base to whom this President nor the Republican Party plays.

I was thinking that the black tie event shown in "Fahrenheit 9/11" represents to whom the President was playing: "Some people call you the Haves and the Have Mores. I call you my base." None of those people will have to suffer the indignity of jail for covering for the President as Libby did. I imagine that some of the folks at that event had the "chump change" of $250,000 (Libby's fine) on them. I expect one of them has already paid that fine and that Libby has been hired (put on retainer?) by one of them.

The loyalty factor which means so much to the religious right who thinks they are Bush's base is much less likely to be seen during the remainder of the President's term. I think that their loyalty to the President puts to shame the few times he uses it to help someone and they will someday realize it.

Gandhi

Turner Classic Movies played "Gandhi" this afternoon.

If you haven't seen it lately, you'll find it well worth being reminded of his ideas.

It's time to be reminded.