"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Sept. 5, 2006. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann: "Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety."

DO click on the video and see Mr. Olbermann delivering his statement.

By the way, the answer to the title question seems to be "no." "President" Bush indeed does not seem to have a sense of decency, his friendship with his "father above" and with Billy Graham notwithstanding. Remember, his closer and far more influential friends include Dick Cheenie, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove....

Adventures of Farley Part II

For an enjoyable diversion, read Steve's latest short story.

Writing and having fun: Adventures of Farley Part II

"A Despicable, Irresponsible Fraud"

As if yesterday and today's shitstorm of Bush propaganda about keeping America safe from terrorism weren't enough, I received some other disturbing news today, from Tom McMahon, Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, and I'm using today's post to share it with my readers as a sort of public service announcement:

Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, "docudrama" to the American public?

Not if you and I have the last word—but either way, we're about to find out.

The ABC television network—a cog in the Walt Disney empire—unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new "docudrama" called "The Path to 9/11". ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, "based on the 9/11 Commission Report."

That's false. "The Path to 9/11" is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.

The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. "The Path to 9/11" mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.

ABC/Disney executives need to hear from the public and understand that their abuse of the public trust comes with a cost. Tell Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this right-wing propaganda off the air—we'll deliver your message:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

This story is breaking quickly. The bias of the "docudrama" only became known when ABC began circulating previews recently. Less than two weeks ago, 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste confronted a lead writer of "The Path to 9/11" after watching the first half of the miniseries at a screening, but most of what we know amounts to bits and pieces because ABC chose to screen the miniseries to conservative bloggers and right-wing media outlets exclusively. Almost none of the Democrats portrayed in the film have even been asked for their thoughts.

But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research, to fact check "The Path to 9/11" as a biased, irresponsible mess. Here's what you need to know:

• Richard Clarke—the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News—describes a key scene in "The Path to 9/11" as "180 degrees from what happened." In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, called the same scene "a total fabrication. It did not happen." And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was "something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful."


• Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder—contrary to "The Path to 9/11"—rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.


• The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says that President Clinton "approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda," and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief "Path to 9/11" scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the miniseries shows how President Clinton had "frequent opportunities in the '90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks—but lacked the will to do so."


• ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of "The Path to 9/11". The producers optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political appointee, as the basis of the screenplay—yet bill the miniseries as "based on the 9/11 Commission Report."

This is a picture of bias—a conservative attempt to rewrite the history of September 11 to blame Democrats, just in time for the election.

Tell Walt Disney president Robert Iger that you hold his company responsible—and that this community demands that ABC tell the truth:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

ABC is trying to use of the airwaves—airwaves owned by you and me, and loaned to broadcasters as a public trust—to slander Democrats and sell a slanderous, irresponsible fraud to the American people, and they're shamefully doing it just weeks away from Election Day.

The Walt Disney Corporation could have given Americans an honest look at September 11. Instead, the company abandoned its duty to the truth—and embraced the fiction known as "The Path to 9/11."

But ABC isn't the only company pushing this gross revision of history. ABC has enlisted the reputable education and children's entertainment company Scholastic, Inc. to send 100,000 letters to high school teachers, urging them to show students "The Path to 9/11". Scholastic has also created a discussion guide for teachers to use to encourage students and their families to watch this irresponsible fraud and then discuss it in school. The discussion guide does not in any way point out the concerns and criticisms that have been raised about the validity and accuracy of the film.

We've got to stop this now.

ABC/Disney must face an accountability moment. You can ratchet up the pressure on ABC by sending your own letter to Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger—tell him to keep this propaganda off their air.

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

Bush, Rumsfeld and the Nazis

In Donald Rumsfeld's August 29 address to the American Legion¹, he likened critics of Bush's War to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. He said they suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion.”

In the photo, Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad in 1983. As a result of his visit with Nazi Hussein, within a year Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq severed them after the U.S. backed Israel in the Six-Day War (1967).

Could Rummy be a bit confused?

Thursday night, at the same (friendly) American Legion convention, Karl Rove (disquised as "president" George W. Bush) said that we're engaged in the “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” "One more drop in the polls," wrote Frank Rich in Sunday's New York Times, "and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds."²

Or, as Rami G. Khouri wrote on Friday at TomPaine.com:

There is something sad about a grown man playing children's make-believe war games in a tree-house in grandpa's back yard—which is how George W. Bush came across Thursday night in his speech on the importance of winning the war in Iraq in the global battle against terrorism. Rarely does a leader of a great country like the United States malign history, his people's intelligence and the dignity of over a billion Muslims in one speech. But Bush did that Thursday night and will probably keep doing it for a while.³

________________________

1. Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention, Salt Lake City, Utah


2. "Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance with the Nazis"


3. "Bush's Terror Tales"

Billy Graham

A letter to the editor in the current issue of Newsweek reminds me that forty some-odd years ago a nephew of mine (then eight years old) went to a Billy Graham crusade and got saved.

The letter writer, Ernest J. Zenker of Mandeville, LA, was responding to the magazine's August 14 cover story, "Pilgrim's Progress":

Billy Graham has caused more damage to the United States than any [other] man of his generation. He has made fundamentalism socially acceptable. As a result, we have a president and a religious right that think loving Jesus Christ excuses any action....

This nephew is today an unshakable Bush supporter.

"President Cheenie"

The fact that Dick Cheenie^* would succeed Bush seems to be overlooked by those commenting on the new British mockumentary, "Death of a President," which will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival next week. Scary thought.

But Robert Kuttner, writing in the Boston Globe on August 26 ("The Cheney Presidency"), contends that it would be useful for us for Cheenie to get the greater media attention that such a happenstance would entail.

If Cheney were the president, more of [Cheenie's backstage manipulations] would be smoked out because the press would be paying attention. The New York Times' acerbic columnist Maureen Dowd regularly makes sport of Cheney's dominance, and there are plenty of jokes (Bush is a heartbeat away from the presidency). But you can count serious newspaper or magazine articles on Cheney's operation on the fingers of one hand. One exceptional example is Jane Mayer's piece in the July 3 New Yorker on Cheney operative David Addington ["The Hidden Power: The Legal Mind behind the White House’s War on Terror"].

...Why does this matter? Because if the man actually running the government is out of the spotlight, the administration and its policies are far less accountable.

...If Cheney were the actual president, not just the de facto one, he simply could not govern with the same set of policies and approval ratings of 20 percent. The media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England.

_______________________
* A.F. Flogger (or somebody) has taken control of my computer. When I'm writing in "my own voice" I can't type Che— Che— Cheenie's name with the correct spelling, but am compelled to spell it disrespectfully. But if I'm quoting someone else (like Kuttner) I can type it as it usually appears.

1,263 / 155.2

Today is the 1,263^rd day of Bush's War, a war our boy "president" has characterized as a hunt for WMD, as a war on terror and now as a war on fascism. What will Rove, Cheenie and Rumsfeld think up next for Bush to say? Kudos to Edward Neuwirth for his letter in today's News & Observer out of Raleigh (Propaganda Machine). Mr. Neuwirth points out that Bush and his gang:

must know full well that the Nazis rose to power by employing a massive propaganda machine to sway and mislead the masses of a nation. By manipulating modern media, 24-hour global news channels and the Internet to its fullest advantage, the Rumsfeld and Bush administration has engaged in the greatest propaganda effort in the history of man.

(Well, maybe Cheenie and Rumsfeld know it, but Bush likely doesn't have a clue, having majored in Great Comics of the Western World.)

But life must go on. The number 155.2 was my weight this morning (in pounds, dressed). I have to avoid simply "eating as little as possible" everyday, however appealing and satisfying that regimen has proven to be. Otherwise I might drop below 150, which I don't think would be good for me. So...when a colleague brought around some humongous oatmeal and raisin cookies yesterday, what could I do? I took one and ate it. Though I didn't feel quite so good ten minutes later as I had before enjoying the cookie (it did taste good), I realized that I "had" to eat one.

Supersize Me

Last night I watched Morgan Spurlock's film, "Supersize Me." Spurlock's the guy who did the experiment of eating nothing but McDonald's for 30 days to see what the effect might be on his body and spirit. Well, even the three doctors he consulted prior to and throughout the experiment did not anticipate how quickly his numbers (the level of his cholesterol and many other constituents of his blood) would go to hell. And he gained 25 pounds.

I was amazed that, after about three weeks, when all three doctors warned him to abandon the experiment, he persevered and finished, and only then went on an eight-week regimen to try to get his numbers back to their original excellent levels. I couldn't have done it.

Hard movie to watch. Made me feel really thankful that I've never been hooked on "fast food" and have eaten Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets and Whoppers only rarely. "Hooked" isn't just a metaphor. Spurlock's investigative reporting documented that the American food industry's tactics for attracting children are as disturbing as those of the cigaret industry have been. McDonalds especially, with its playground, its toys, its clown....

More Bush Mercenaries

Did you realize (I didn't) that Bush is using mercenaries to collect federal income taxes? I found it out by reading Paul Krugman's August 21 op-ed column¹ in the New York Times, "Tax Farmers, Mercenaries and Viceroys," which concludes: "This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work. No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering."

My friend Keith S. comments:

With all of these mercenaries that the US government is hiring, what will happen with them if the next administration shows a bit more sense and fires the lot of them? Will they meekly return to being shop clerks, factory workers, middle-level managers? I doubt it. This issue has been of some concern to me for over a year. It is frightening what they could do, and more than a few of them are capable of doing just about anything that would involve toting a gun and making a buck. The future has many problems. Many of which were created by our current administration's lack of intelligence (and by that I mean their stupidity, not their lack of information).

________________
1. Available on the web only to Times Select subscribers.

“...clarify the different points of view”

“‘What matters is that in this campaign that we clarify the different points of view,’ Mr. Bush said [yesterday]...,” according to Jim Rutenberg in today's (New York Times (“In Election Push, Bush Faults Talk of Iraq Pullout”).

Uh, oh. Watch out, Bush is about to try to remember what Karl Rove told him to say to try to put a cement suit on all opposition....

Haiku

Three naked poplars,
. . .silent above russet-leafed
slope of steaming lake.

Caution about Oliver Stone's new film

Oliver Stone's new movie, "World Trade Center" (which I haven't seen yet), is supposedly "apolitical."

But yesterday on TomPaine.Com[mon Sense] Ruth Rosen, in her article, "Oliver Stone And The Big Lie," wrote:

The Big Lie, first coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf, was made famous by Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Third Reich. The idea was simple enough: Tell a whopper (the larger the better) often enough and most people will come to accept it as the truth.

Ms. Rosen thinks that Stone, by failing to clarify the facts about who attacked us on September 11, 2001, undercuts the historical value of his film

and reinforces the Biggest Lie of the last five years—still believed by far too many Americans—that in Iraq, we are fighting those who attacked our country.

Hey, Bush finally did something good!

I was in Columbia, Pennsylvania the last three days, for training. To the east of Columbia is Lancaster, in Pennsylvania Dutch country. To the west is York, home of a huge Harley-Davidson plant. You may have heard that Bush visited Lancaster and toured Harley-Davidson yesterday afternoon. Well, everyone in the class, including the instructor, wanted to avoid the "presidential" traffic congestion, so instead of going to 3 or 3:30, class ended about noon.

As a result, my wife and I were able to drive out of Columbia and reach home almost before dark, rather than sometime after midnight as we had been expecting. Thank you, "President" Bush.

Of course, by leaving early we were also able to avoid the psychic toxins that flooded into that otherwise beautiful countryside with the arrival of our sham president and some of his sychophants.

"...leadership that has nothing to hope for but fear itself"

As I rode through the middle of our nation's capital yesterday, I was struck by the bad vibes. A toxicity has settled over the Capitol Mall in the few short but interminable-seeming years of our pissant "president" and his money party, who at least now seem to realize that the only card they have to play is fear-mongering (see Paul Krugman's op-ed piece in today's New York Times, available only through subscription to Times Select).

Yet another thought about eating

This afternoon my wife and I had another third of our respective Cadbury candy bars (the ones I purchased last Sunday and mentioned in a blog afterwards). Eating such a small portion is new to me—small, but it's the amount defined as a serving on the wrapper. I ate it slowly, in very small bites. Wondrously, I couldn't remember ever enjoying chocolate more, or remembering many times enjoying it as much.

I think that such slow, appreciative eating must be what is meant by savoring. And it seems to me that savoring might be an effective technique for adjusting to eating less. And not only is savored food more enjoyable, but eating slowly gives your stomach a chance to catch up and tell you it's satisfied before you've overly filled it.

An old friend who admits to being ten or twenty pounds heavier than he'd like to be, but who also seems to regard it as virtually impossible to do anything about it (such as eating less), pronounced that I have "amazing will power" to have lost twenty pounds recently.

Will power? I really don't think so. The benefits of losing unwanted weight are so obvious, it seems that all a person has to do to incorporate a regime of eating less into his or her "life style" is to remember and celebrate those benefits. Moving more nimbly, bending more comfortably. Buttoning pants without having to suck in and pinch the abdomen. Looking better (especially in the mirror). Receiving nice compliments. Feeling better, not only physically but also mentally—and even morally, through having a more flattering self estimation.

And actually enjoying food more, through savoring rather than devouring it. Now that's a surprising benefit, don't you think?