Recently Britney Spears has decided to take a much needed break ffrom her career to focus on her new marriage (It's lasted longer than 72 hours!) and starting a family. Well done. Really what Britney has done is taken a brief hiatus because she was badly overexposed and everything she did seemed trashy and a pathetic cry for help to the public. We can learn a lot from that Britney. She has written on her website that one of the reasons why she was so overexposed and made some bad choices was because she had people around her- her publicist, her manager, her mom and dad- that pushed her to focus on her career and told her what to do. Without that opposition, that grounding force, we got Britney the teenage temptress, a mixing of school girl innocence and lusty harlot that probably sent many middle aged men into premature ejaculation. Once she became an adult it was time to party and that meant sex, drugs, and bad business decisions. My point you ask?
Look at our government. W. has surrounded himself with yes people or people that will make the decisions for him. Bush forced Colin Powell out and now he has no one to tell him pre-emptive invasion is a bad idea. No one to tell him the pending wars with Iran and North Korea will probably not work out so well. No one to tell him that Social Security exists as a safety net so that old people are not littering the streets, living out of cardboard boxes and talking about the good old days when they had medicare and furniture covered in plastic. No one to tell him that you can only ignore the environment for so long before the polar ice caps melt and we are living in a Water World using dirt and "hydro" as currency. (Yes, I watched Waterworld with Kevin Costner last night, call me crazy but I like that movie.)
There is no one to tell him that if you bankrupt the government by increasing the deficit, you are setting America up. Up for what? Well China and Japan own one third of our debt, what if they called it in? What if they imposed sanctions on us? When was the last time we built our own Nintendo Game Boys? America has over 7 trillion dollars in debt, that is more than ALL of the third world countries. Pretty bad, huh? You think that other nations are going to go around asking for our debts to be erased and forgiven the way we just did for Iraq? And should Iraq have their debts erased if they have the potential to make all of that money from the oil fields? What about Saddam's money? did we get it and can we use it? I guess we know the answers to all of those questions. The Iraqi people are never going to see a dime of the oil money and the reason W. wants their debts erased so bad is so that all income generated will be profit in his pocket. Where does that leave America? And if our dollar falls, if the government goes bankrupt, where does that leave the rest of the world that relies on our financial success?
Maybe we need to learn from Britney, and take some time off from all of this warmongering and profiteering and take care of our homelife for now. We are overexposed, and anything we do or is done to us will face the ridicule and criticism of the rest of the world. But hey-
"We don't need permission to make our own decisions, that's our prerogative..."

For a good piece of progressive animation, check out What Barry Says.

I don't know if you have been listening to the news, but apparently Bush has signed a bill that will allow for an $800 Billion dollar deficit hike.
I don't know about you, but I can't grant myself a credit limit hike. I can't call up Discover Card and ask them to give me $800 billion dollars more this month because I am low on cash and I need to borrow more to get my life in order. They would laugh at me and hang up. Or berate me, because those Discover collections people are cold, unfeeling people that like to lower your self esteem. Of course the majority (Republicans) passed it without a blink because they are fearful and backwards thinking. I always laugh when I see the republicans get on the bandwagon thinking that they will get a piece of the pie once the neo-con train rolls in. Only a few will be selected and they took that vote years ago. Better luck with the next fascist movement.

Meanwhile in Iraq, U.S. Forces raided a Mosque and no one knows why. People were praying, PRAYING! and they were being killed. What have we accomplished with this raid? What damage have they done, as if we haven't already done enough killing of Iraqi citizens in Mosques? Would we ever have the nerve to go into a church and do this kind of raid or even into a synagogue? I don't think so. I think we would have waited until prayers were over and been more cautious about capturing the target. At this point, however, we do not know who the target is. The reports haven't said and according to the eyewitness accounts they weren't informed of the purpose of the raid.

In Iran, we have a dejavu situation going on. Are they making nuclear weapons, uh, yeah. Are we going to have Colin Powell stand in front of the world and claim to have "intelligence" that they are up to no good? yes, ma'am!
Are we going to go it alone, um I mean with a "coalition of the willing" to disarm them and take over their oil, I mean "spread democracy"? You betcha.
Keep an eye out. They don't say history repeats itself because it sounds so catchy.

Finallt, to get your weekend off to the right start, corpse desecration.Israeli troops are being investigated for reports that they positioned the head of a suicide bomber on a concrete barrier and took a picture with a cigrate hanging from the dead man's lips. A man was reported as saying that 'such acts were forbidden in an army that values human rights."
An army that values human rights? You have got to be kidding me. The same army that opens fire on little kids that throw rocks at tanks? Any military, no matter what nation, has a purpose and that purpose is not human rights. It is to follow the orders of your commander in chief and if his agenda is one based on human extermination, so be it. It's been a long while since we had any honorable leadership for any military organization.

On that note, have a great weekend!

For those of you who can respond to me and let me know why it is we are at war again, please do so. But do it after you go to Fallujah in Pictures. After seeing these pictures of bloody children and soldiers immortalized in their uniforms with youthful, hopeful faces and flies feasting on dead Iraqi "insurgents" I forget why we are there. I forget why we aren't storming the capital and demanding justice. All I can think of is what will we do when these children grow up? How hard will their hearts be? How can we explain to them if we can't understand it ourselves, if we justify it, if we are ambivalent to their suffering?

Let me know your thoughts.

Did you know that Belgium tried to prosecute George W. Bush for war crimes? Me neither!

The things you learn when you search out alternative press. Here is an article that was posted on Commondreams.org regarding the possibility that Canada could grow some balls and prosecute W. I kid Canada, because I love.
Should Canada Indict Bush?

Have you been watching all of the resignations for Bush's Administration and the CIA? Scary world we are living in. The thing that scares me most is that we are going back to an isolationist mentality of foreign policy only much more agressive and offensive. Condoleeza Rice is going to be our representative out there in the world and I personally don't think she is capable. She is shrewd, yes, but in terms of foreign affairs, she doesn't cut it. She stood before the 9/11 Commission and told them that we realized after 9/11 that the oceans wouldn't protect us from terrorism anymore. PLEASE. We figured that after Pearl Harbor, sweetheart. It is really easy for me to criticize her and call her stupid, right? Because underneath that we know she is not stupid. She has an agenda. The Bush Administration has an agenda and she is loyal to them. She is like that character Bennie in The Mummy when he says something like he would rather be a servant of the devil than feel his wrath, I am paraphrasing because its been a while, but you know what I mean. Or maybe I am giving her too much credit. Maybe she truly believes in W. and his agenda and that this agenda is in the best interest of the country or at least in her best interest.

Meanwhile, we have bigger fish to fry. Remember our old pals from the Cold War? They are back, and they are doing the same stuff America is doing. So how can we complain? No, I am really asking! How CAN we complain?
Arrested for Requesting Election Results and also Russia developing new Nuclear Missile.
the first article is pretty much about falsifying elections but the second one is about Russia, under the guise of fighting terrorism, is developing a new nuclear missile that can " carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons." Fun! It is also going to have a range of more than 6,000 miles and will be harder to detect. More Fun!
Can you tell me how this kind of weapon is going to be useful in fighting terrorism? Will this be used to blow up a bunker or basement apartment somewhere in the world where the terrorists meet to have a pot luck dinner? No. This kind of weapon will only be used for irradicating a country and terrorists don't have a nation, no matter what your evening news tells you, thats why they are so hard to fight. We are fighting and idealogy and so are they, not a land mass. And which country do you think that they are aiming those warheads at?
"Earlier this year, a senior Defense Ministry official was quoted as telling news agencies that Russia had developed a weapon that could make the United States' proposed missile-defense system useless. Details were not given, but military analysts said the claimed new weapon could be a hypersonic cruise missile or maneuverable ballistic missile warheads."

And what is the distance between Moscow and Washington? I am glad you asked, because I already found out. 4862.756827041068 miles. Courtesy of Great Circle Distances Between Capital Cities.

Also, KMart and Sears are merging. When Martha Stewart gets out of prison, do you think that she will do commercials with Ty the guy who used to be on Trading Spaces? Just a thought.

On a personal note, I feel there is no dignity in a B+. If you are an educator, why would you decide on such a self-esteem shattering grade? You are saying that a student is not good enough for an A-, but still slightly more intelligent than a B. Is the plus just pity? What's the point of even going to class? Just get a job delivering newspapers where you don't have to read or write, just count change and tell people to have a good day. So what if my sentences are awkward and convaluted? It's part of my charm!
Dick.

There is a great little website with a rant that warms my northern, liberal heart called Fuck The South. It is definitely worth checking out.

This is not the first time since the election that I am hearing talk of letting the south go their merry way. It has been in the air, a sort of revolutionary whisper campaign that Karl Rove would be proud of if he were on the side of progressives. I don't know how I would feel about a succession, but I know how I would feel about another civil war. I'm not fighting! I do think change is happening and we are living a very important period in history. These are the moments that children are going to be studying in school or the moments that teachers are going to be forced not to talk about to their students. With the kind of politics that are at play making our country's discourse hang in the balance, well, I never can tell. I think it is these moments that make you absolutely sure who you are as a person and what you believe in OR you resign yourself to letting other people think for you.

In other news, Yasser Arafat died. What did he die of? Reports vary from cancer to a brain aneurysm to poison. Who knows. It is still too early for me to comment on how I feel about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I fear a power vacuum because Arafat didn't name someone to take his place and that can only mean truly bad things. Look how well the power vacuum worked in Iraq? I worry what Sharon will do because I don't think he is the right man to represent and lead the Israeli people. He has been able to push his right wing agenda because of the fear of terrorism among his people, kind of like another president I know.

Tony Blair flew all the way from England and boy are his arms tired, just to discuss the Middle East with W.
Blair, Bush Meet to Discuss Mideast Peace. This seems to be a bit problematic for me. Two white men, leaders of major western nation states, get together to discuss what THEY are going to do with the Middle East situation. I know it is important to think of strategies but it just seems to me that talking about what you are going to do with other nations while they are not there reminds me of how parents talk about their children without acknowledging their presence. Is this some of what frustrates the other nations of the Middle East? The reason why there is so much trouble in Israel is because Britain abandoned ship and allowed an unfair division of land amongst the Palestinian and Jewish people after the Holocaust. People were displaced and things keep getting more and more ugly as the years go by. I am not saying that the two sides don't need a mediator, I am just wondering how effective the United States and Britain would be in doing the job. Especially with all of the other troubles they are facing both internally and externally.

Finally, if I hear one more newspaper or politician jubilantly call Alberto Gonzales a "Hispanic Success Story" I may scream. This is a very bad man that was appointed to be the next attorney general because Ashcroft resigned so that he could devote more time to his singing career. I don't understand how any decent person can call this man a success because in my opinion, he has failed at being a person. If you need proof, look at his resume. He was an attorney for Enron, a company that lied, cheated, and stole from their employees and helped to ruin California's economy, and he gave the okay to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Gonzales Nomination Draws Cautions, Concerns of Rights Groups.
What does that tell the rest of the world about our country when we go around bragging about our values and the president says how disgusted he is about the whole Iraqi prison mess. Why then appoint a man that has the nerve to call the Geneva Convention "quaint" and argue that it doesn't apply? Why? Because we are America, stop asking questions, that's why.
There are people that would love to take everything this country was founded on and reinterpret it, change it and in a Stalinistic way, rewrite history so that the truth never existed. This man is one of the bad guys. I don't give a flying fuck if he grew up in a two room house with no water as the son of migrant workers. Poverty doesn't make you a good person. Ethics and compassion do. He has none. He looks at pictures of the prisoners in Iraq and see the sexual, depraved torture as something that is allowable because he defines torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”, so therefore sexual humiliation is not torture, it's okay, chill out. He sees laws on civil liberties and human rights and devotes his energy to finding ways around them. He doesn't represent what this country is about, no matter what the polls tell me, I know my country. He is just Bush's homeboy. This is not the man I want protecting my civil liberties. When did the position of Attorney General become about denying civil liberties instead of protecting them and the people of the United States of America?
This is bullshit.

In much lighter news, Brad Pitt visited Ethiopia. Brad Pitt Visits Ethiopia to Study AIDS.

The most shocking part of that article...Brad Pitt is 40! Who knew?

I don't understand how his trip will make a huge difference in the lives of these people. It will draw much needed attention, yes for a minute, but unless he is going to be like Angelina Jolie and adopt some kids and set up house there, what's the point? He was just on Today arguing for stem cell research. Is this a midlife crisis or is he trying to pick a really deserving cause to focus his efforts on? Maybe he is thinking of a career in politics. Could you imagine the votes he might get if he ran for office? He would unify women and gay men across party lines! Commercials for his candidacy could show clips from Troy for the gay demographic because he is all tan and muscled, I think women like any movie he has been in but perhaps a sappy, one like A River Runs Through It. He could get the male vote by playing clips of Fight Club which will inspire young heterosexual males everywhere with pent up rage that Grand Theft Auto doesn't satisfy.

I'm just being bitter and playa hatin.' B-Rad is cool because he is at least trying to understand, trying to make a difference.

Here is an article that might make blaring alarms go off in your head.
Senate Hopes to Get Intelligence Bill Passed.

Why must the intelligence budget remain a secret? I am all for getting more border guards and "banning from the United States aliens who participated in overseas torture or killings and foreign officials who ordered or participated in genocide or severe violations of religious freedoms" even if our own army has participated recently in overseas tortures and killings, it works in theory that everything is black and white, good and evil, you praticipate in genocide because you are bad and you participate in Abu Ghraib because...never mind. What national threat does knowing how much your government is spending on "intelligence" pose? I can't imagine some terrorist is sitting on the fence about whether to bomb an embassy or the Statue of Liberty and finding out that we spend a billion dollars is going to push him over the edge.
Once again I am dissapointed in the sheep known as the Senate that follow along with whatever the president says like when they voted for the patriot act without even reading it. I guess it's to be expected now. The democrats have lost their fight and there is no one left to represent the people effectively.

Remember John Kerry? Where the fuck is he now? He's been particularly quiet.

I fear that rallying cries for the people and the democratic party are falling on deaf ears. D is for Democracy, T is for...?

Other interesting news is the exodus from the Bush administration, Ashcroft, Evans... could Powell be far behind? Rumors have already begun and for his sake I hope so. I still have a weird soft spot for Colin Powell even though I know you don't get that high up on the Bush ladder without getting your hands dirty. However this administration really fucked over Powell's reputation. He was respected by the global community and after giving that WMD speech at the UN he's got nothing. Powell: U.S. Will Pursue Aggressive Foreign Policy
What is interesting in this article is the fact that Powell states:
"The president is not going to trim his sails or pull back," Powell told the newspaper. "It's a continuation of his principles, his policies, his beliefs."
Sounds like C-Rock is distancing himself from the Bush administration - "his principles, his policies, his beliefs." Get out while you can!
Read this on the exodus: Ashcroft, Evans first to resign from cabinet."
It says that not only is Colin Powell possibly leaving, but Condy Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Thompson. What does that mean for the Bush administration? One can only imagine.

Hello All.
I read the most interesting book the other day. It is something that really explains the republican party after Ronald Reagan and shows how Democrats just aren't fighting the way they should be because they are trying to be republicans, especially in the example that the author gives regarding Proposition 187 in California a few years back. Proposition 187 was an initiative voted on by Californians to deny illegal immigrants medical and educational benefits in order to help their failing economy.

I don't agree with everything in this book. I don't think the ills of society can be blamed on the investment in whiteness and nothing else. There comes a point where we must stop looking at all of the cultural reason for problems with society and force people to take responsibility for the structure and our own participation in it. It is good to know reason for actions if they change action. I do agree with the parts that explain why people are more likely to vote for men that embody the patriarchal, heterosexual patriotism that has only increased since 9/11. Do I think there is a culture war going on? Not really. I think people are scared and they are looking for something to cling to so they stick to the idealogy that brings up memories or famtasies of a simpler time, a time when God was king and mainstream society shared the same view on race, sex, and politics. By mainstream society I am mean white people. After the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movements things got all crazy, there was diversity and equality everywhere which can be very threatening to some people. The Reagan administration was very successful at exploiting that.

Check this book out:

It is called The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. by George Lipsitz.

Like many Americans that voted and supported John Kerry, I am stung by the polling numbers. I knew this was going to be a tough race but I harbored the hope that Kerry would win in a landslide. I saw the lines of people waiting to vote and that hope grew. I thought all of these people were plugged in to the same motivating force that I was. I was wrong for the most part. If you watched the election results as they came in last night you heard the words over and over again "too close to call." If you check the statistics, this is true for many of the states. In some states like Utah for example, Bush won by an overwhelming 71 percent.

Another thing I keep hearing on the television is the words "cultural differences and moral values" as well as differences in "idealogical alignments" as MSNBC is calling it. For a well written, informative article analyzing the statistics of the vote, check out Four years later, voters more deeply divided. Although I must say that I am VERY dissapointed with NBC for being the first to call Florida for Bush, which boggles my mind because there are still over 1 MILLION absentee ballots to be counted and Bush's lead was only by about 300,000, and for calling Ohio for Bush because as Tom Brokaw said this morning, "even if it went to John Kerry it wouldn't make a difference in the outcome anyways." Oh really, Mr Brokaw? It's hard to tell how many true electoral votes go where because the media is not on the same page, there are different counts done by different people. I briefly watched Fox News last night and one of the anchormen discounted the democratic voter registration drive in Florida saying that all of the people registered were probably just "inmates" who said sure I'll vote, I'll sign up. So then Florida has a population of 2 million inmates that couldn't vote? Disgraceful. But expected.

Getting back to the cultural differences in America, I am stunned that there is a country that is less like me and more like President Bush. 11 states voted against gay marriage. Is that what it comes down to? Hating gay people? I understand that there are a lot of people in this country that have religious beliefs and although I consider myself a very spiritual person, my "religion" is not defined by an institution that tells me what I should believe in a cookie cutter type of way. I don't have those same allegiances as many people do. I don't look down on them for having it, but it is hard for me to understand. If we are at such odds on moral issues, maybe it's time we start discussing what those moral issues are. So that I can have a clue where I stand. Because right now, it's lonely here. I look at this country and it feels foreign to me. I don't understand how people can see George W. Bush as a "moral" man.

On the website Mobilization 2004-The Prophetic Justice Principles it gives a list of moral values that were agreed upon by people of faith across different religions. It is worth looking at and then reflecting on, comparing to your own personal beliefs. If we are a nation of religious people than we really have to decide which religion that is and how much of it we want infiltrating our government. As it stands now I am frightened of the reaction fo the world. How will they see Americans now that Bush will be declared the winner? Is there hope? In what? In whom? If the American people have spoken and we are pretty much split down the middle, is civil war far away?

Maybe that big chunk of red in the middle believes in a Bush-Cheney election. Where does that leave the rest of us that find this administration stifling? I am looking at Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia. Maybe it is time for many of us to think of a mass exodus to a new promise land.

Or maybe it's time for a revolution, old school style, circa boston tea party era.

Here is an article that was forwarded to me via email and I thought it was worth reading. Vote people!!

American Conservative Magazine

November 8, 2004 issue


"Kerry's the One"



By Scott McConnell



There is little in John Kerry's persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge - the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry - seems overdone, as Kerry's contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.)

But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.

But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.

It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into the most radical American President we have had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America's conservative party, he has become the Left's perfect foil-its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries' budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation's children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal-Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can't be found to do it-and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been "anti-Americanism." After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a "Third Way" between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe's radicals embraced every ragged "anti-imperialist" cause that came along. In South America, defiance of "the Yanqui" always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It's the same throughout the Middle East.

Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that "good" countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.

These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists-indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America's survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world's most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.

I've heard people who have known George W. Bush for decades and served prominently in his father's administration say that he could not possibly have conceived of the doctrine of pre-emptive war by himself, that he was essentially taken for a ride by people with a pre-existing agenda to overturn Saddam Hussein. Bush's public performances plainly show him to be a man who has never read or thought much about foreign policy. So the inevitable questions are: who makes the key foreign-policy decisions in the Bush presidency, who controls the information flow to the president, how are various options are presented?

The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory. Much has been written about the neoconservative hand guiding the Bush presidency-and it is peculiar that one who was fired from the National Security Council in the Reagan administration for suspicion of passing classified material to the Israeli embassy and another who has written position papers for an Israeli Likud Party leader have become key players in the making of American foreign policy.

But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency-and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell's departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the "neoconian candidate." The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.

If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past-and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.

George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies -a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky's concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies - temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election - are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans "won't do." This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support. 

Hey Everyone,

Tomorrow is our opportunity to go out there and evict W. and his band of demonic trolls from the white house. If you have some free time a friend of mine let me know about this great organization that can really help to spread awareness and remind people that might easily be dissuaded from voting because of all the bullshit that the republicans are doing to intimidate and erradicate young, low-income and minority voters.

Here it is:

Change American Democracy With a Few Quick Phone Calls

The most important election of our lifetimes is just a few days away, and yet millions of Americans who are most affected by unjust government policies may not vote. Progressive non-partisan groups have registered over 2 million new low-income, minority, and young voters for the upcoming Presidential election. VoterCall.org offers you a fast and easy way to call these voters with a word of encouragement to go vote. Research shows that such calls increase turnout dramatically.
www.votercall.org


VoterCall is a project of Res Publica, supported by the National Council of Churches, TrueMajority, Rock the Vote, and National Voice (The November 2 Campaign)

Votercall.org

Thanks!