Bush Wants You -- in Jail

George W. Bush has proposed legislation that would give his administration the power to lock-up ordinary Americans in the prison at Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key. In draft legislation prepared in response to last month's Supreme Court decision against the use of military tribunals for US prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Bush proposes to extend the practice of indefinite detention and summary trial by military commissions to include ordinary American citizens.

The Washington Post reports, based on leaks from those with access to the draft, that the bill would legalize military tribunals as decreed by Bush in 2001, and, for the first time, make US citizens subject to such summary proceedings.

The tribunals, "courts" consisting of active-duty military personnel under orders of the President as Commander-in-Chief, would have the power to impose death sentences based on secret evidence and in proceedings from which the defendants could be excluded whenever military judges decided this was "necessary to protect national security."

This morning's front page of my daily news included stories on: the war on Lebanon, the continuing heat wave, a missing Alzheimer's patient, and the news that the local baseball team is switching radio stations after 40-odd years. Oddly, nowhere in the entire paper will you find the news that George Bush wants Donald Rumsfeld to be able to arrest and jail you and then convict you in secret.

White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts - Washington Post

But did we at least have a good time doing it?

US National Debt by Presidential Term, Percentage of GDP,1976-2005

Honestly, I expect history will record my generation as the worst stewards since the Gilded Age. No vision, little thought, and, for chrissakes, no responsibility. My first political science professor, Keith Shirey (probably paraphrasing C. Wright Mill), used to say that American Conservatism is based on an "I got mine, up yours" philosophy. He was right. But that was then. Our generation has succeeded in making greed and selfishness into a national obsession.

Take just these three, juxtaposed in my morning's local paper:

"UnitedHealth Moves to Stop Exec Options" A local hero and "philanthropist" has decided that his company should stop awarding stock options, now that he's accumulated $1.5 billion worth of them. Of course he "added shareholder value," (while health care costs became a national embarrassment and crisis) and has given tens of millions to charity (nearly 1%!), so that's the end of it.

"Stadium debate also puts Dome's fate up in the air" The legislature is changing the state tax code so that the sales tax can be increased without a public vote in order to finance three new sports stadia to the tune of a billion dollars. Vikings, Twins, and Gophers will all get new while county social workers have to tell foster parents there's no money to help them care for crack babies.

And, finally, "Editorial: Tobacco fee ruling is needed very soon" Timmy the Boy Governor signed a "no new taxes" pledge and so insisted that we call the new $0.75/pack cigarette tax a "health impact fee" rather than a tax. Big Tobacco (who had previously paid the state billions of dollars (which Timmy spent in his first term in order to avoid raising taxes)) said, "Whoa! We've got a settlement that says that MN will never charge a fee to offset the impact of our product." And, of course, BT is right. They've already won in the lower courts and will again, putting a $400MM/year hole in the state's budget. But not to worry, Timmy is running for VP.

Like Van Morrison, each morning I get my daily brief and stare out at the world in complete disbelief. It's not righteous indignation that makes me complain, it's the fact that I always have to explain.

Do you think it's possible to hide from one's own children? Sooner or later they're going to tire of my playful demeanor and old jokes. First they'll humor me, but when they figure out what a mess I've made--and that it's all going to be left for them to clean up--they'll turn on me for sure.

The Sting

His Government charged him with money laundering -- acting as a conduit for cash sent to terrorists that had attacked his country. As far as he knew, the charges cwere the result of a sting operation involving agents of his Government who pretended to be interested in sending money to terrorists.

Believing in his constitutional right to confront his accusers and review the evidence against him, and assuming that he would be afforded the opportunity for a fair trial, he hired a good lawyer to defend himself in his Government's Federal Courts.

Upon reading a story in the New York Times suggesting that his Government's case was based upon evidence obtained illegally by eavesdropping on his telephone calls, his lawyer asked the his Government's Federal Court to dismiss the charges if his Government had acted illegally.

And then things got really weird.

First his Government held a secret meeting with the Judge of his Government's Federal Court. His Government had evidence, it said, that had to be kept secret in order to protect the people from terrorists. Neither he nor his lawyer were allowed to attend the meeting between his Government and the Federal Judge, and they were prohibited from ever seeing the evidence his Government said it had.

As a result of the evidence that only his Government and the Federal Judge knew about, his motion to dismiss his Government's charges against him was denied and the Federal Judge ordered the trial to go forward. But even the order of the Federal Judge was sealed, preventing the man and his lawyer from ever knowing the reasons why the Federal Judge and his Government denied his request.

Is this America?

Judge Won't Drop Charges in Mosque Sting -- New York Times

Thoughtcrimes

In a crackdown "not seen since the Nixon years," the White House aggressively moves to prosecute journalists. (Nevermind that this is the same administration that exposed a CIA covert agent for its own purposes. They have no sense of irony at all.) The Bush Justice department dispatches agents all over the country to apprehend reporters and journalists suspected of, in Bush's words, "helping the enemy."

Meanwhile, thousands of Federal Court cases are kept secret. The number of Federal cases sealed by the Bush administration has doubled in the last two years. Secret indictments. Secret trials. Secret plea bargains and verdict. And when a journalist asks about the Bush Secret Courts the answer is, "It's a matter of nation security. What's your name."

In 1948 George Orwell wrote what some say was a commentary on post World War II Europe and others say was a remarkably prescient bit of science fiction:

He had committed -- would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper -- the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

It was always at night -- the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

1984, Chapter One

Thank goodness Orwell wasn't writing about the United States in 2006, right? Certainly we're a country that loves freedom far too much to allow something like that to ever happen, right?

Be very... thoughtful... in how you answer.

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted - Washington Post

Thousands of federal defendants' cases kept secret - Grand Forks Herald

Religious Totalitarianism

Tony Blair joins George W. Bush in proclaiming that god told him to invade Iraq.

Violence continues weeks after it became widely known that a Danish newspaper solicited and then published cartoons blasphemous to another's god.

And then twelve internationally renown writers and intellectuals publish a manifesto calling for the rejection of "Islamist Totalitarianism."

At the risk of offending the international intelligentsia, the authors of the manifesto got it only about half right. We stand today at the brink of worldwide crisis brought on by a totalitarian movement, but it is religious totalitarianism of all sorts, not just Islamic totalitarianism, that threatens civilization.

And so, acknowledging the efforts of the wise men who wrote the manifesto and with apologies for presumptuousness, here follows an improved version:

Manifesto: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: religious totalitarianism.

We, the free-thinking people of the planet earth, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, triggered by the Bush/Blair religious war on Iraq and exacerbated by the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilizations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, religious totalitarianism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. All religious totalitarianism, whether Islamist or Christian, is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the religious totalitarian's domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of a particular religious culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of being "god-less," an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Blair: 'God will be my judge on Iraq' - Independent (UK)

A Manifesto Against the New Totalitarianism - Jyllands-Posten (Denmark)

Impaled by the Media

A vampire is running for governor of the North Star State. How would we know? Jonathan "The Imapler" Sharkey held a news conference last week announcing his campaign for governor and let us know he's a vampire.

Sharkey seems quite earnest and, although he really needs a good Web designer, his call for impaling criminals just might catch on.

Chances are no one would ever have heard of Jonathan the Imapler except that a local TV station decided that it would be a fun story, and so they covered the news conference where, in addition to announcing his candidacy, he explained that he's a moderate sort of vampire, "I'm a Satanist who doesn't hate Jesus, I just hate God the Father," and who drinks only his wife's blood.

And then the reporter mentioned that the Impaler's wife is, herself, a pagan ...

... and two days later she was fired from her job as a school bus driver,

... and a day after that they were evicted from their home.

Thank god they weren't gay.

Impaler to Run for Governor - KSTP

Princeton Witch Disputes Hiring - KSTP

Remote Control

Mechanically, quietly, and unfettered by any sense of mercy or conscience, the Hound hunts down and kills any enemy programmed into it. Sheer efficiency makes the Hound a potent tool in the war and it affords the safety of distance, both physical and emotional, from the real results of their actions.

The mechanical Hound is one of the most vivid images from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

"The mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the fire house. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber padded paws.

Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine."

A U.S. Air Force National Guard pilot flies a Predator, equipped with powerful cameras and missiles, that flies continuously over the area in and around Iraq. Here he sits in a control room in a hardened hangar at a U.S. Air Force base hundreds of miles away from the target. Most likely neither he nor his commanding officers have ever visited Bajur in Pakistan, and certainly no U.S. Senator has ever been there.

"Now, it's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do? It's like the wild, wild west out there. The Pakistani border's a real problem," said Senator Evan Bayh, noting that the "real problem" lay with the Pakistani government's inability to control that part of its country. "So, regrettably, this kind of thing is what we're left with."

Senator Trent Lott added, "I would have a problem if we didn't do it. There's no question that they're still causing the death of millions of -- or thousands of -- innocent people and directing operations in Iraq. Absolutely, we should do it."

The death toll from the 3 A.M. remote controlled air-strike included five children, five women and eight men. According to Pakistani intelligence Ayman al-Zawahiri, the "#2 al Quaeda" whom the U.S. said was the target of the attack, was not among the dead and had not been in the area.

The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy - The Observer (UK)

When Bush Signs Legislation the Joke's on Us

Magnanimously, George W. Bush appeared to concede and sign into law new legislation banning torture even though he'd fought the measure for more than a year. But, unnoticed, he simultaneously reserved the right to completely ignore the new law and continue unabated his program of secret renditions and admitted torture.

He accomplished this sleight of hand while secluded on his Texas ranch during the New Year's weekend by issuing a "presidential signing statement" setting forth the conditions under which he was willing to sign the new law. In other words, Bush was signing the legislation on the condition that it would be interpreted exactly the way he wants.

In the twisted logic of the Bush regime this means that if anyone even dreams that the new law might curtail Bush's expansive view of presidential power then he will simply insist that his signature is invalid because it violates the conditions he announced when he signed it ... and if the anti-torture law wasn't signed then it must have been vetoed ... and if it was vetoed then it never became a law ... and therefore, he's not in violation of the law since it never became law in the first place.

Presidential signing statements are not new. Ronald Reagan adopted the strategy and signing statements have proven useful when an administration needs to clarify what it believes the legislature's intention was. What is different now is the sheer number of times the Bush regime has issued its own interpretations of legislation. Reagan issued 71 signing statements in his eight years, George H. W. Bush 146 in four years, and Bill Clinton 105 in eight years.

However, George W. Bush has found it necessary to challenge the U.S. Congress' intent and re-state legislation to his liking more than 500 times in the six years of his regime.

"It's good to be the king," exclaimed the dim-witted Louis XVI as portrayed Mel Brooks in his film History of the World, Part I. Audiences at the time thought it was a comedy. But America under the rule of George W. Bush is no laughing matter, and it is clearly not a democracy.

White House Letter: How Bush tries shaping new laws to his liking - International Herald Tribune

It's a Great Day for Something

Almost silently the un-manned U.S. "Predator" aircraft flew in low over the neighborhood rooftops yesterday, bombing three homes in Pakistan and killing 17 people.

Hundreds of miles away, in an air-conditioned trailer, the U.S. pilot stared at a color monitor and flew the aircraft by remote control.

The breathless headlines in U.S. media said we were pretty sure we'd gotten the "#2 al-Qaeda."

Hours later the foreign press revealed that Ayman al-Zawahri, the target of the attack, was nowhere near the site. "Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior Pakistani official, "He was never there. This is what we know after a detailed probe."

Meanwhile, U.S. media reported that in Iraq insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter killing two Americans. Not reported were the facts that these two bring the total number of U.S. dead to 34 so far this month and 2,214 since the U.S. invasion. And no mention was made of the estimated 27,814 Iraqis who have been killed during the U.S. war.

But today is a new day in the suburbs and it's going to be sunny and warm. A good day to drive the SUV to the gas station.

Today in Pakistan more than 8,000 tribesmen staged a protest to condemn the airstrike, which one speaker described as "open terrorism" and an intelligence official said that more than 30 were killed in the air attack but that the remains of some bodies had "quickly been removed" after the strike.

Maybe get a car wash too. That magnetic "Support Our Troops" ribbon is getting a little hard to read through all the grime.


al-Qaeda No 2 not at US air strike site - MidDay (India)

Police Track Down Quaker Terrorists

In the tireless quest to root out terrorists wherever they may hide, the National Security Agency used local police to infiltrate and track anti-war protesters as they prepared to demonstrate outside the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The target of this domestic surveillance was the a group called Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, affiliated with the local chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, whose members include many veteran city peace activists with a history of nonviolent civil disobedience.

There may or may not be an investigation, but the findings, of course, will be not be released to the public because we wouldn't want to tip off the terrorists, now would we?

NSA used city police as trackers - Baltimore Sun

Our enemies are not fools and they, at least, read history

U.S. military expenditures already total more than all other nations on earth combined and now economists report that the real cost of George W. Bush's War on Iraq exceeds $2 trillion--about ten times more than the administration had previously admitted.

In the movie Syriana, a foreign leader observes that a nation that accounts for one-half of the world's military expenditures in order to protect the interests of 5% of the world's population cannot long prevail as a world power.

Enticing an enemy into spending itself into bankruptcy would be an excellent alternative if you could not hope to prevail on the military battlefield.

Hey! Wait! Isn't that the strategy we used to defeat the Soviet Union?

Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist - Guardian

Revenge of the Mutt People

All the while walking the precincts for Kerry and reading Joseph Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas, the questions kept nagging, "Why do they keep electing Republicans? Why do they vote against their own interests?"

Joe Bageant may have the answer. It's the logical consequence of our arrogance and failure to give a damn about the "Mutt People" who are now angry and out for revenge:

"We will either see that Americans, religious or not, get educated equally so they won't be suckered by political and religious hucksters or accept that uneducated people interpret politics in an uninformed and emotional manner, and accept the consequences. America can no longer withstand the political naivete of this ignored white class. Middle class American liberals cannot have it both ways. It has come down to the simplest and most profound element of democracy: Fairness. Someday middle class American liberals will have to cop to fraternity and justice and the fact that we are our brother's keeper, whether we like it or not. They are going to have to sit down and actually speak to these people they consider ugly, overweight, ill educated and in poor taste. At some point down the road all the Montessori schools and Ivy League degrees in the world are not going to save your children and grandchildren from what our intellectual peasantry, whether born of neglect or purposefully maintained, is capable of supporting politically."

Joe Bageant: Revenge of the Mutt People

Git 'R Dun

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq, told reporters. "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

Roughly half of the $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort has been eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein. About 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. All that and there's still what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

Still, George W. Bush does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February. Other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to make up the difference, administration officials say.

U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding - Washington Post

Ricky's Intelligent Designs

In 2001 he championed a "teach the controversy" amendment and earlier this year Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) commended the Dover Area School District for "attempting to teach the controversy of evolution."

But Senator Santorum was no where to be seen during the six-week trial and one day after a Federal judge ruled that the district's policy on intelligent design was unconstitutional, Santorum said he was troubled by court testimony that showed some school board members were motivated by religion in adopting the policy.

And, he went further and said that he disagreed with the school board for mandating the teaching of intelligent design, rather than just the controversy surrounding evolution.

Finally, working himself up into a real lather, Santorum--who sits on the advisory board of the Thomas More Law Center, which defended the school board in court--said that the case offered "a bad set of facts" to test the concept that theories other than evolution should be taught in science classrooms. "I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did," Santorum said, adding that he intends to withdraw his affiliation with the Michigan-based public-interest law firm that promotes Christian values.

Santorum now critical of Dover case - Philadelphia Inquirer

Plan of Attack: Iran Version

Like the skillful way in which the master magician leads you to watch his left hand while he palms the gold coin with his right so that at just the right moment you're convinced that he's made a coin materialize out of thin air, so the Bush administration seizes every opportunity to move while the nation is otherwise distracted.

While we all were otherwise occupied ... what was it? The War on Christmas? The round of victory speeches? The revelations of domestic spying? No matter, all the while the Bush administration was secretly marching us inexorably toward an invasion of Iran, as early as this spring.

With scant attention, CIA chief Porter Goss slipped into Turkey to deliver dossiers suggesting that Tehran is cooperating with al-Qaida, and providing frightening details of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. What is more, Goss assured Ankara that the Turkish government would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened and suggested that the Turkish government would be given a green light to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day of the invasion.

The US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike? - Spiegel International

Reagan and Bush: The War Presidents

If you believe that Ronald Reagan was responsible for ending the Cold War, then you've got to believe that Richard Nixon was responsible for putting a man on the moon. A more accurate rendition of history would, of course, reflect that each was simply the occupant of the Oval Office when history was made thanks to initiatives set in motion by Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy.

Yet the fact that the Cold War ended during the time span of the Reagan administration has led a vocal minority of conservatives to claim that Reagan himself was the supreme architect of Soviet defeat.

Disturbingly twisted parallels can be drawn between the Ronald Reagan/Cold War and the George W. Bush/War on Terror couplings:

Unlike most U.S. presidents--but like George W. Bush--Ronald Reagan entered the White House with no background in national security or foreign policy.

Like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan's qualifications were open to ridicule.

Unlike his Cold War predecessors--but like George W. Bush--Ronald Reagan showed little interest in mastering the intellectual side of foreign affairs.

Like George W. Bush, rather than achieving an acquaintance with U.S. policy from reasoned study, Reagan's knowledge was firmly based in personal experience.

And, perhaps most ominously, the fact is that the Soviet Union was not defeated militarily, but rather by the U.S. willingness to simply out-spend its enemy--apparently like George W. Bush's War on Terror.

Ronald Reagan Memorial

Seeing Things No One Else Does

"In 2006, we expect Iraqis will take more and more control of the battle space, and as they do so, we will need fewer U.S. troops to conduct combat operations around the country. In the coming year, we will continue to focus on helping Iraqis improve their logistics and intelligence capabilities so more Iraqi units can take the fight and can sustain themselves in the fight," said George W. Bush at about the same time as suicide bombers in Iraq killed 183 people including 7 Americans.


Bush Sees Changed Military Role and Reduction of Troops in Iraq - Los Angeles Times

111 Killed by Suicide Bombs - Scotsman

This is supposed to make us feel better?

It turns out that the most recent round of spying on Americans in their homes didn't start with the Bush Administration. In fact, much of the spying on you and your neighbors was started before George W. Bush issued his executive orders in violation of his oath to uphold the Constitution.

In the weeks after the September 11 attacks the NSA acted all on its own to begin monitoring telephone calls and e-mail messages between the United States and Afghanistan to track possible terror suspects and then broadened the eavesdropping operation to include other international communications and eventually domestic communications as they tapped into some of the nation's main telecommunications arteries to trace and analyze large volumes of phone and e-mail traffic to look for patterns of possible terrorist activity.

And they did all of this before George Bush issued any orders at all.

So now let's see if I've got the outline right:

George Bush says he's exempt from existing law because he's acting as commander in chief of his "War on Terror," even though war has never been declared by Congress.

And, Dick Cheney helpfully adds, it shouldn't matter anyway because we got it all wrong back in the Nixon era when we put a new restraints on presidential power.

Besides, there are bad people in the world who want to kill us and who hate us because we love freedom.

But, in the end, the joke's on us! It turns out, our very own government has been carrying out these illegal activities all along, we just didn't know about it.

I feel so much better. Let's switch the channel and see how those coal miners are doing.

Files Say Agency Initiated Growth of Spying Effort - New York Times

Uh-oh. When the terrorists are smarter than your own leadership, now that's a problem.

Imagine that! What did those dastardly terrorists do as soon as George W. Bush started eavesdropping on Americans? Why they immediately stopped using telephones and the internet and started using live messengers instead. That's what they did.

(And, by the way, the source is bit of news is the internet magazine of the Washington Times, the usually reliable supporter of the Bush administration owned by Sun Myung Moon.)

So, let's see. If the terrorists were no longer using their telephones, why exactly was it necessary to spy on Americans? Why is it still going on? Why is this man still in the White House?

Wiretaps Fail to Make Dent in Terror War; al Qaeda Used Messengers - Insight

Those in the Best Position to Know

Nearly half of US military personnel no longer support George W. Bush and about the same number feel that the US should not have gone to war in Iraq. That's down from about two thirds a year ago.

What is more, only 64 percent support the Pentagon leadership, compared to 70 percent a year ago, about the same number that feel that the US military is "stretched too thin to be effective."

In fact, the only number that has improved is the number opposing restoration of the draft. Only 68% now oppose a draft, compared to 75% last year.

Troops Sound Off: Poll Finds High Morale, But Less Support for Bush, War Effort - Military Times

He cannot stop himself so we must stop him ourselves

Something snapped. It finally happened. The long awaited coin finally dropped.

Maybe it was his delusional New Years' Eve edition of the weekly President's Radio Address, where he said the economy is booming, the Iraqi people are rejoicing in the afterglow of their new-found democracy, the people of the Gulf Coast are celebrating their return home, and there's practically nothing wrong anywhere in the whole wide world.

Or perhaps it was his swaggering and defiant attack on reporters at a military hospital in San Antonio the next day who had the audacity to ask again why he thought it was okay to break the law and spy on Americans.

There have been so many signs over the years. Sometimes the episodes are amusing, sometimes just confusing. Increasingly they are threatening. But at some point Americans need to begin to wonder what's going on in his head. Sooner or later we'll all have to come to grips with the fact that the state of mind of the President of the United States is a matter of national and worldwide security.

Consider this: A man struggling with his own anxiety and feelings of inadequacy will employ various strategies throughout his life:

1) through alcohol and other substance abuse;

2) by being a born-again Christian, being connected to God, by feeling that he'll be saved in any kind of a rapture, by feeling that he's always on the side of the Good;

3) by making other people anxious, so he can project his anxiety into the rest of us;

4) simplifying things, dividing the real world from his own inner world, into good and bad, into black and white;

5) by being dismissive or cruel to other people, by making them anxious, and by gratifying his own sense of power to compensate for feeling helpless;

6) and by becoming detached from the consequences of his behavior.

In the words of psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, "Bush will not stop of his own choosing. He will only have to be stopped."

Bush's Mental State Raises Serious Questions - Uniorb

Bush on the Couch : Inside the Mind of the President - Justin A. Frank

Neocon Coup at Pentagon

With almost no notice at all President Bush signed an executive order changing the line of succession for Secretary of Defense.

In so doing he placed three Cheney-Rumsfeld lieutenants between Donald Rumsfeld and career military professionals, increasing to four the layers of Neocon ideologues separating George W. Bush from anyone who even resembles a professional solider.

The Neocon minds that brought us the debacle in Iraq now have unfettered control of the mightiest military force the planet has ever known. And, speaking of Iraq, the insurgency continues to grow with three Americans and 20 Iraqis killed yesterday.

Pentagon Succession Demotes Military - The Sun News