WASTING YOUR VOTE

I would say that if you are voting in a close race, and your vote might make the difference between electing a completely corrupt Republican like Tom Delay or a delusional paranoid like Dick Cheney or a clueless spoiled brat like Rand Paul, then you should vote for the Democrat. You should vote for the Democrat because they are heading in the direction we need to go, instead of digging our country's grave as eagerly as Dick Cheney built his Veep bunker so he could sleep at night.

Otherwise, vote for what you believe - and your vote is not being wasted. Whoever the elected politicians are, they all are impressed by people who actually voted and refused to vote for any mainstream politician. They look for opportunities to pick up those votes next time.

The best example is Ross Perot's election victory. He had been a Republican, he refused to go along with the corrupt expansion of the deficit under Reagan and Bush the Barfer, he spent $25 million to educate the American people about the dangers of running up the federal deficit.

In the 1992 election, he received almost 20 million actual votes. I don't think it's a coincidence that the next administration went on to achieve a balanced budget. Clinton and Gore showed us how to do it - restrain growth of federal spending, create only tax cuts that actually help grow the economy instead of reward political cronies, and wait for steady growth of the economy to increase revenues until a balanced budget is achieved.

I don't think this would have happened without Perot and his 19,741,065 votes.

So go out and vote intelligently for candidates that truly represent you.

Just remember Ralph "The Shyster" Nader and Florida 2000. We would not have suffered the attacks on 9/11 or any of the aftermath if Gore had become our next President.

BIG OIL

Let's not get confused here.

This debate is not about science or education or evidence or hypotheses or data.

It's about money, lots and lots of money.

Opposition to beliefs about global warming doesn't just spring up from nowhere. Global warming and especially public policies to mitigate global warming represent a direct threat to the income levels of the world's biggest and wealthiest corporations. And so we see the backlash - designed to confuse and especially to delay any effective public policies to reduce fossil fuel use.

Is there a controversy? No. It's very clear that adding components to the atmosphere that absorb infrared will trap solar energy and that this added heat will cause temperatures to rise.

Don't believe that? Try a test yourself. Park your car in bright summer sunlight with the windows open. You're now experiencing how effective 100 miles of atmosphere is at trapping solar energy. Now roll up all the windows. And wait. Even a fraction of an inch of solid glass is more effective at trapping infrared radiation than our atmosphere. It just doesn't get out. See how long you can stand it in there. (Don't take any small children or pets with you.)

Nobody knows what the long term effects will be from the energy being trapped by increased levels of greenhouse gases. Will the Arctic ice cap disappear in a few years? Probably. Its total area and average thickness are as small as human beings have ever witnessed. Will sea coast cities see more powerful storms that cause terrible destruction? Probably. Who's next after New Orleans? Will the Sahara migrate northwards to Europe and the Mojave to Sacramento? Maybe. It seems Australia is already running out of water in many places.

So the safe thing to do is to minimize fossil fuel burning and try to keep things the way they are. You might even say that was the conservative approach.

But these days, conservative means selling out to big money, in this case, Big Oil and Big Coal.

There's a better term for an unholy alliance between corporations and government, coined by Benito Mussolini in reference to the Roman fasces weapon.

How sad that one generation of Americans went to war to protect us from fascism, and that the present generation of Americans includes so many who embrace it.

AMERICA THE BOOBYFUL

During the Bush/Cheney years, the Republicans had their chance to show what their ideas meant in the real world.

The rich got richer, everybody else got left behind, the economy was destroyed by parasites from within, the Constitution was shredded, the leaders of the government used their positions and powers for the personal gain of themselves and their cronies.

Things got so bad, we actually elected a black President.

Now it's two years later. Some of the mess has gotten cleaned up. We have started back on a path to decency and strength and prosperity. But we were in a very deep hole and we have a long way to go.

But we elect Presidents, not Popes. Obama has had to work within a political system designed to have checks and balances and limits to power, against a cynical and traitorous political opposition that is PROUD of the damage they did to the rest of us because THE RICH GOT RICHER. That's who they work for after all, that's who owns the news channels and talk radio stations and bizarro right wing pressure groups.

Obama has been more of a centrist than an extremist, and it can be frustrating watching him try to work with the utterly corrupt America-hating GOP. But he is working for a better future for all of us, and we are making progress. He's right that things will get immeasurably worse if the Congress goes Republican.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are too dumb to remember how bad things were and how much worse things were getting two years ago. We like to think of ourselves as Number One, and we were for a while.

But in the end, we get the government we deserve. And if we vote for the liars and thieves and fools and bigots that populate the Republican Party these days, we will destroy ourselves and our future the way many other great nations of the past destroyed themselves.

We have a chance to keep moving forward, with Obama and the Democrats in charge. Or we can hold our noses and jump back down the rathole with the GOP. Who are we? What happens next?

Welcome to America the Boobyful?

Too bad. We had a chance to be great.

GENERATION SCREWED

Sorry, boys and girls.

You won't have what your parents had.

We could get a job. If we finished college, we could get a better job.

Even high school graduates could get a decent-paying job, marry a lovely sweetheart, buy a decent house, and raise an adorable family.

Sorry, kids.

Your jobs have disappeared, because corporate bigwigs have found ways to employ underpaid foreign workers and still sell products at American prices.

This strategy has been pouring money into their pockets for a few years now.

Eventually, foreign companies will realize that self-indulgent American executives are only parasites, and foreign competitors will take over the industries they were so kindly trained to operate.

That's good, if you want to build economies around the world and make human life better in the Third World.

It's a little scary if you are a young American looking for a job, and looking for a career that will last until you hit retirement age. Sorry about that.

Boy, are you screwed.

If you want to make a difference, if you want some hope, I have some advice.

Vote in every election, and NEVER vote for a Republican.

Good luck. You are going to need it.

THE MIDTERMS

I'm hoping that the midterm elections won't turn out as badly as some have predicted.

But the United States has already sliced its wrists and turned on the gas in the oven.

Before WWII, in the 1930's, the United States was nothing special.

After WWI, in the 1950's, the United States was NUMBER ONE in just about everything.

Europe and Asia were devastated, rebuilding their cities and homes.

The wonderfully fortunate Americans were roaring on, profiting from a hugely expanded manufacturing base.

But that's over now.

A corporate class, loyal to profits, contemptuous of national interest, has lined their pockets by shipping American manufacturing overseas. Now it's gone.

The next generation of Americans will have to ask themselves, How long can a trade deficit be financed, when do we have to pay the bill, and how in hell can we do that?

Get ready for the 21st Century.

Get ready for the collapse of the USA.

Unfortunately, the average American was too stupid to vote in his or her best interest. He and she thought TV news and TV ads were telling them the truth.

Morons.

ELECTION RESULTS

There is one reason to expect the Democrats will do better than anyone expects right now.

Cell phones.

There is also a reason to expect that things will be as bad as the super-rich hope for.

Young voters.

Young voters don't have land lines or answer them when they ring. They have cell phones, and they use them to talk and text and play goofy games while they are waiting for the bus to arrive or the class to end. What's important about this is that they almost NEVER get included in political polls.

Pollsters only call land line numbers, and talk to those few people willing to answer their questions. That process reaches many more old people than young people. So young people, and their political opinions, don't get included in polls.

Pollsters get around this by weighting their responders according to how likely they think the responders are to vote. They expect settled older people to vote, so their responses are counted as a lot of real votes on Election Day. They don't expect young people to get their act together, so their responses don't get weighted as heavily.

This is how we get right leaning pollsters and left leaning pollsters, by the weights they choose to use to massage their data.

Right now the polls are heavily weighted by the responses of older voters, many of them still deluded by the notion that Republicans are fiscally responsible instead of shameless liars and thieves.

But young voters aren't even in the polls. Pollsters can't even talk to them, because they don't call cell phones.

If young voters act like typical young voters, the GOP may get back to its usual shenanigans. If young voters actually vote, a lot of people and pundits are going to be surprised.

SYMPATHY FOR THE OUTCASTS

I don't smoke, for two reasons.

For one thing, when I tried my first cigarette, at the age of ten, out in the woods, with a pack of matches and a box of Lucky Strikes that a friend had stolen from his mother's purse, I coughed out that first drag with a howling noise I had never made before. I heard a clear message from my body - Don't do this again.

Also, I knew that smoking was hard to quit and I doubted that I would ever have the will power to do it. So, to me, starting smoking meant smoking forever, and I just didn't do want to do it. Simple, dull, boring.

I've known some people who do smoke, and I have to tell you: smokers are really great people. They're more optimistic than I am, they like excitement more than I do, they aren't afraid to take chances, they seem to be more outgoing and more sociable.

But they got hooked. Probably a friend who smoked got them started. Now it's really tough for them to quit. But every smoker I've ever met tries to quit eventually.

Here's what I would do: add a tax to every cigarette and use the money to buy a stockpile of nicotine patches. Then give the patches away for free to any smoker who wants to stop. Use the rest of the money to run anti-smoking ads to keep kids from starting.

In the meantime, when I walk past the outcasts standing on the sidewalk at work, smoking at least 25 feet away from the doors, sometimes in cold or rainy weather, I don't feel disdain or disapproval. I feel sympathy for good people with a bad habit. I know they are going to try to quit some day, if they aren't trying already, and I wish them well.

Because smokers are great people, and it would be nice if all of them got to lead long, happy, healthy lives.

THE MELTDOWN

Hey, what's going on here?

Didn't we just suffer through a catastrophic meltdown caused by Republican corruption and thievery?

Enormous deficits directly caused by unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy and crony corporate pork barrel spending, relentless attacks on human rights and our own American civil liberties, a determined effort to dismantle any government oversight of every business activity - remember?

We saw a balanced budget turned into enormous federal deficits. We saw SALT treaties ripped up to allow the multi-billion dollar Star Wars boondoggle. We saw Marines sent to grab oil fields for private companies, who sent more six-figure contractors to Iraq than we sent troops. We saw the NSA set loose to spy on Americans, listening to all of our phone calls and reading all of our emails.

And, finally, we saw the catastrophic meltdown of the U.S. economy in 2008. There were plenty of warnings. Foreclosure rates were rising to historic levels, and various economists were warning that a bubble was forming in the housing market. The Republican administration had years of warning that some action should be taken to slow things down. But that was completely opposed to their political philosophy - Let The Rich Get Richer.

And, finally, predictably, things fell apart. Banks failed. GM went bankrupt. Markets crashed. And millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, their health coverage, their hope.

We did the right thing in booting the GOP in 2008, and bringing in new leadership to get us out of the mess. And maybe someday the GOP will reform itself to be a genuine political party again, instead of a corporate-controlled neofascist conspiracy.

They had their chance, and they showed beyond any doubt what they have to offer: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the country goes to hell.

After the last Republican-led meltdown, in 1929, we elected a Democrat in 1932. Things had gotten pretty bad by then, with national unemployment hitting 25%. But we were still struggling to recover for the rest of the decade. When we finally did emerge after WWII, we began the era of American leadership that we all grew up with.

It's 1934. Are Americans dumb enough to stick that screwdriver into the light socket AGAIN?

OMG

CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

Americans remember that we won World War II.

But nobody seems to remember how we did that.

First of all, we didn't do it alone. We were part of the Allied Forces. It was a serious strategic blunder for Japan to attack us at Pearl Harbor. We entered the war to fight alongside of Great Britain and her Commonwealth countries. It was a fatal strategic blunder for Nazi Germany to attack the Soviet Union in 1943. The Red Army fought back with brutal ferocity, and were the ones to enter Hitler's Berlin in 1945. We did our part, and can be proud of that. But we didn't win the war single-handedly.

And, secondly, much of the war effort that led to victory occurred here in the United States, not on overseas battlefields. We built war machines in numbers that overwhelmed the opposition. For example, at the start of the war, Japan had 10 aircraft carriers in commission, and the United States had 8. At the end of the war, Japan's force had been reduced to only 4 carriers. The United States had 114. For example, the German Panzer tank was more powerful and more durable than the American Sherman tank. But American Sherman tanks outnumbered Panzers by a ratio of 5 to 1. We won the war partly because of our manufacturing might.

So how are things going these days?

A decade of jingoism and cowboy highjinks severely damaged our relations with our historical Western allies. The present administration is trying to repair things, but the jingoistic and partisan GOP seems to have forgotten the idea that politics stops at the water's edge. Once most of the world saw us as the good guys. That was before Abu Ghraib. They thought our leadership could be trusted. That was before we re-elected Dubya.

And our manufacturing might? Our corporate leaders, seeking to enrich themselves more by paying less to their workforce, have relocated much of that to foreign shores and foreign workers. China now has much of our manufacturing capability and expertise. They are now the world's second largest economy, and growing rapidly while we sputter along.

We were on the winning side in 1945.

But times have changed.

There are clouds on the horizon.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

If you were old enough to remember the Great Depression, here's what you would remember.

After the stock market crash of 1929, our economy and the world economy went into a tailspin. Unfortunately, we had just elected a Republican in 1928, Herbert Hoover, who philosophically held fast to the notion that the government should not involve itself in taking action in the crisis. As conditions got worse, as unemployment hit 25%, hundreds of Hoovervilles sprouted up to house thousands upon thousands of rail-hopping hobos looking for work, and Herbert Hoover assured America that he was staying the course and prosperity was just around the corner.

It wasn't. America dumped Hoover and the Republican Party in 1932, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. Over his next two terms, he had some success in using government powers and government funds to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Many wealthy and privileged people in this country still hate him for doing that.

The worldwide economic crisis brought down a new democracy in Germany. A new fascist government allied itself with a militaristic regime in Japan. Western governments, sickened by the horrifying loss of life in WWI, went to great lengths to avoid new conflicts. That didn't work.

War started in with a German invasion of Poland in September 1939, a little after Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler agreed on a non-aggression pact. Poland was crushed, and afterwards Britain and France declared war on Germany. For two more years, America stayed out of the war. But Roosevelt and many others wondered what would happen if we did not enter the war, and if France and Britain were defeated. Would Germany come after us next?

But the United States did enter the war, after our naval forces in the Pacific were attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941. We declared war on Japan. Germany, Japan's ally, declared war on us. We then declared war on Germany.

No one in this country knew if we would win this war, or lose it. In retrospect, Franklin Roosevelt's statement that "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." was a pretty gutsy thing to say. But no one knew if we could win, or could even survive this war.

For at least once in our nation's history, we were united by the shock of Pearl Harbor. We amazed ourselves and the world with the force of our united strength. The tide of the war against Japan turned in the summer of 1942, with an American victory at Midway and the destruction of the carrier force that attacked Pearl Harbor. The tide of the war against Germany turned when they betrayed the Soviet Union in 1943 and attacked. Our inconvenient alliance with the Soviet Union began, and we supported them in their resistance to Nazi Germany.

In 1945, the United States and its allies were victorious. We all experienced the relief and pride of a hard earned victory. But unlike our allies, we had not been bombed into rubble.

Before WWII, the United States of America had been an economic entity. But we were not a world leader in anything, except corn and cotton production.

After WWII, we were Number One. In just about everything.

While the rest of the world rebuilt its houses, we went full speed ahead with our massive manufacturing plants. Suddenly, the backwater pre-war USA became the powerhouse post-war USA.

We're Number One!

Many modern Americans don't remember what the world was like before WWII.

We weren't much then.

We didn't become something more until after other world cities were bombed to rubble.

After that, we got a big head start. We were Number One when there wasn't a Number Two.

The Fifties. The Sixties.

Those were the Good Old Days.

Unfortunately, we've outsourced our manufacturing and ruined our climate and indebted our economy to foreign powers. Oops.

If you are old enough to remember the Great Depression, you came through a terrible time.

If you're not old enough to remember the Great Depression, you're living in a terrible time.

Your enemies are domestic, not foreign.

We're only Number One if we're smart enough to stay Number One.

But, geez, what are the odds of that? It's comforting, at least, to remember.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

ISLAM

I'm not sure whether I met any Muslims before I met ...

Gee. I can't remember his name. He was Egyptian and he worked with me at FourPhase.

FourPhase has disappeared into corporate history, and so has he.

He was a good guy, very competent, very nice. He could write Unix scripts.

His example showed me that Islam has some things in common with Christianity.

You can have good guys like Saint Francis and Saint Theresa and Mother Theresa saying they are Christians. And you can have dirtbags like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and George W. Bush doing the same.

Islam has decent people , like him, and insane monsters, like Osama Bin Laden.

We Americans have a solution to this insanity.

Everyone, from bigoted racist Christians to civilized tolerant Muslims, are entitled to pursue their own personal religious convictions.

And we prosecute anyone who threatens our Constitution and our existence as a nation.

That's the American Way.

Yeah!

OMG

So the Obama Administration has followed the same course as the Nancy Pelosi Congress.

It was possible, and frankly fully justified, to impeach Bush and Cheney for war crimes.

We did, in fact, convict and punish others for waterboarding our own soldiers in WWII.

So Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, who authorized waterboarding, deserved at least to go to prison for war crimes. I know, some idiots think these guys were desperate to save American lives. But that's not the truth. The people being tortured were Al Qaeda leaders, and they were being asked specific questions. They were being asked to confess some contact between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The torture had nothing to do with saving American lives. It was ordered from the White House to produce false confessions, to save the lily white asses of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Pelosi knew enough to start impeachment proceedings. She should have. But she didn't. She decided that getting the Democrats into power in the next election was more important than seeking justice for these crimes. Was she right? I don't know.

Now the Obama Administration has avoided partisan confrontation on this issue and many others. They have sought to show progress, and to deny the right wing any inflammatory positions that might be used to frighten centrist voters. They have followed the Nancy Pelosi path of seeking power by soothing the anxieties of moderates rather than implementing the rightful demands of their own supporters.

Is it possible that they have miscalculated, that their own supporters will neglect their civic duty and vote this November? Is it possible that the racist base of the Republican Party will show up and steal the next Congress away from the rest of us?

OMG

AMERICA

I was watching Fourth of July celebrations today.

We are a nation of diversity. There are Americans of many colors and from many cultures.

But are we a nation any more? What holds us together? It's not an unreasonable question. Our political system and our national discourse are deeply divided in a way not seen in decades.

America is a special place. A nation of immigrants, descended from those who were not content to stay close to home. A nation of survivors, who endured hardship and oppression and emerged with a hunger for freedom and independence.

But these days we seem to be a nation that is splintered and divided. There are daily echoes of our terrible Civil War. Southern whites are screaming. Southern governors are talking about secession.

All we can hope for is that the greatness of the ideas upon which our nation was founded will prevail, that the center will hold.

We believe that all people are created equal, with inalienable human rights.

We believe our government has been created to serve us, and derives any legitimate powers from our consent.

On this day of national celebration let us resolve to honor and defend those ideals.

We are Americans, and we believe in human rights and human dignity.

We are Americans, and we believe in vigorous, open, honest debates about our future.

We are Americans, and we believe that government officials should work for us and not for private, corporate interests.

Each generation of Americans has faced challenges to these ideals and to our nation's survival. Our own generation faces dangerous enemies, enemies from within. They are willing to sacrifice our national interests to those of their corporate cronies. They dismantled SALT agreements to enable pork barrel Star Wars spending. They sent our troops into harm's way, and followed them with thousands of six-figure contractors and no-bid contracts. They have violated our laws and treaties with open contempt.

Whether America survives depends, as always, on whether this generation measures up.

At least we should try. At least we should try to keep the ideals of America alive.

ENEMIES FROM WITHIN

Do you have the feeling that something is wrong with this country?

A lot of people seem to feel that THE government is no longer OUR government.

WE THE PEOPLE are supposed to be in charge. But it feels like WE are ignored, patronized, used.

It's no wonder a lot of people feel this way. We have been betrayed.

An arrogant elite has seized the powers of government, and used those powers shamelessly for their own secret purposes, and for their own fantastical enrichment.

Fortunately, we got rid of many of them by electing Barak Obama in 2008.

But they are still ravenously seeking new prey, and they are a deadly threat to our democracy.

Some people call them NeoConservatives, which apparently means FakeConservatives Who Lie and Steal a Lot.

Perhaps you've wondered where Dick Cheney and his buds hung out after that nasty Bill Clinton made George Bush the Older move out of the White House. Well, part of that time they were flying high with Billy Kristol over at his Project For a New American Century. This was a little think tank where rightwingers could dream big dreams and giggle all day long.

You see, Communism had died. It was buried on August 13, 1961, the day that East Germany began construction of the Berlin Wall. There aren't many walls constructed by a state to keep its own citizenry from escaping. Can you think of any others? Me neither.

In 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation. He had disappeared from public view during the final week of the election campaign. Many Russians believed he had died of a heart attack. But they elected him anyway. The Communist on the ballot finished third, behind the apparently dead Boris Yeltsin. In Russia. Where Communism had ruled since 1918.

With the demise of Communism, some folks got the notion that this was a great opportunity to reduce defense spending, and pay ourselves a Peace Dividend. But the NeoCons had another idea. They had a dream. The big one. World Domination.

If we sent in our Marines to a bunch of Third World regimes, and set up our own friendly regimes, who could stop us? Nobody! This was a priceless opportunity!

And so was born the NeoCon vision of world domination. (1) Get back into office by any means. (2) Terrify or deceive the electorate to gain unlimited powers. (3) Send in the Marines wherever we can get away with it. (4) Make sure we end up with a docile foreign state and sweet deals for our buddies.

You can read about it at http://www.newamericancentury.org/ , Billy Kristol's Project For A New American Century. Names on the site? Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz. Jeb Bush.

Be sure to check out page 63 of the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" document (http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf). It says this:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Yes, they did steal an election, letting the Scalia slimeball cast the only vote that counted in putting Bush the Clueless into the Oval Office and Dick Cheney into power.

Bu they still needed a catastrophic and catalyzing event. So they demoted Al Qaeda expert Richard Clarke from the National Security Council and waited. When a CIA officer visited Bush the Dumber in Crawford in August 2001 to tell him that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent, Bush responded "Now you can say you covered your ass." and did nothing. When an FBI office in Arizona identified 9/11 hijackers who were learning to fly but not to land, they did nothing. And guess what? They finally got what they wanted. A terrified American public. And unlimited power.

So what happened next? Absolute Power.

THIS SPECIAL PLACE

The United States of America has been and can be a great nation.

We are unique in all of human history because we are where the world met.

Our first immigrants arrived from Asia, before civilization existed. After thousands of years in the Americas, native populations numbered in the millions when Christopher Columbus arrived. The next century brought them horrifying devastation, as infectious diseases like smallpox killed nearly 90% of the first Americans. Some echoes of this past survive in the remaining tribal nations.

Waves of immigration from Europe helped to grow this country, as famine and persecution and war and poverty drove people across the ocean to seek a better life.

The brutality of slavery brought millions of Africans to our shores. They have not had an easy road. Over 200,000 fought for their freedom with the Union Army in the Civil War, and to some extent that fight against racism continues today.

Modern times have brought immigrants from every nation on Earth, seeking opportunity and freedom.

We are a special place because of the people who came here. They were visionaries, who left home to search for a brighter future. They were survivors, who endured peril and hardship and became stronger and tougher from it. They were determined idealists, who crossed oceans in wooden boats rather than compromise their religious beliefs.

And, most importantly, we are a special place because we have chosen a path that values individual rights and liberty above all else.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

If we can manage to live in peace and prosperity among ourselves in this nation, based on these principles, we can and should lead the world into a better future, because of who we are and what we believe.

But each generation of Americans has had to face enemies of one sort or another. We face new enemies today, dangerous ones. Enemies from within.

LINDA TRIPP RETURNS

Do you remember Linda Tripp? She was a Bush 41 administration employee, who kept her Defense Department job into the Clinton administration. She met Monica Lewinsky when Lewinsky was transferred out of the White House to the Defense Department. Tripp then learned details of Lewinsky's sexual activity in the Oval Office, secretly taped Lewinsky's conversations, tried to get a book deal from gossip specialist Lucianne Goldberg, and finally turned over all the dirt she had scraped up to political hack prosecutor Ken Starr.

I hate to remind you of all this. People remember the Clinton scandal. They don't remember the perverse abuses of power that the GOP used to attack Clinton. They don't remember that the Newt launched politically motivated special counsel investigations of Whitewater land deals, the White House travel office, White House requests for personnel files, and Vince Foster's suicide. No crimes had been committed; nothing improper had occurred; all of this was deception.

Clinton was finally impeached and acquitted, for giving deceptive answers to Starr about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. There was no crime to investigate here; consensual sex between adults may be sleazy but it is completely legal. The "crime" Clinton was impeached for was giving misleading answers to an unprincipled, corrupt, right wing hack who was abusing his official authority for GOP political gains.

But let's remember that Linda Tripp played a key role in the attack. Essentially she was a right wing subversive, working from within the Clinton administration to bring it down.

Obama does not have to deal with the nightmare of a corrupt, unprincipled GOP Congress yet. For the sake of this country and the future of the world let's hope he never has to.

But he may need to deal with the problem of right wing partisans infesting federal agencies at high levels.

Do the recent actions of the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service seem a little odd? Have you noticed the Obama Administration announcing one thing - like a drilling permit moratorium - while Interior Department underlings announce something else?

This may be just the normal operation of a large bureaucracy, and a difficulty of coordinating the efforts of thousands of civil service employees.

But there may be more than a few Linda Tripps out there. And the Obama Administration had better beware of the dangers of fanatical subversives working to bring them down.

IT AIN'T OVER TIL IT'S OVER

It was a wonderful thing for this country to reject the incipient fascism imposed by Bush and Cheney, by turning away from McCain and electing Obama.

Some of us might feel that this was inevitable, because the disasters and disgraces of the Bush years were things we needed to put behind us.

But not all of us. Those horrible Bush years weren't so bad for some. The rich didn't just get richer - they got way richer than ever before. They did this in part by corrupting our political system to work on their behalf. So, lower taxes for the rich, dismantling of public interest constraints like environmental protections, and incredible boondoggle porkbarrel projects like Star Wars. They got way richer. We got shafted.

You might think that electing Obama fixed things. But it wasn't enough. The people in the shadows who put Reagan into power, who profited so handsomely from the reckless deficit spending he and Old Bush produced, who created and unleashed a right wing propaganda plague against the Clintons, who stole the 2000 election and then nearly destroyed the world economy - they're still out there. And they're still greedy for more.

You might think that electing Obama fixed things. But the people who created the mess we are suffering through right now are eager for more.

If you don't vote against them, they're going to come back.

Please be sure to vote on June 8 and in every election.

It ain't over.

RECONCILIATION

Of course the GOP is lying about reconciliation.

They've discovered that lying creates a solid base of the 25% of the American electorate that CAN be fooled all of the time.

And apparently the mainstream media no longer takes any responsibility for broadcasting truthful, fact-checked stories. It makes for better ratings to have Jerry Springer-type conflicts in your news coverage. And it's politically safer for a corporate entity to broadcast both sides of every story. Truth. And Lies.

The simple truth is that the GOP has disappeared as a true political party. They were acquired by the American Corporate Empire at some point in the 1980's, and have been a wholly-owned subsidiary ever since.

Now they have a mission, and that mission is to subvert the operations of the United States government so that it serves their own purposes. Defense policy to serve defense corporations, e.g., a non-functional Star Wars system and Iraq contractors who outnumber - and cost more - than our troops. Energy policy to serve energy companies, e.g., a tobacco-industry-style campaign of disinformation and denial to derail any attempt to conserve energy or seek new energy sources. Health care policy to protect the interests of health care companies. And on and on. If you are still listening to anything coming out of the GOP, I have a question. Why?

One can only hope the Democrats will have enough smarts to produce a House/Senate compromise bill that does some good. Because once they do, the American people will see once again the the GOP is lying. This isn't socialism or a government takeover or martial law or anything bad. This is government more or less of the People, by the People's elected representatives, and most definitely for the People.

And that's a big change from the last eight disastrous years of GOP corporate butt-kissing.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a legitimate conservative political party in this country.

I'm just saying that the GOP is so putrid and corrupt that somebody should bury it.