Do not fear the lack of knowledge, fear false knowledge. All evil in this world comes from false knowledge. - Leo Tolstoy

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Indigenous Peoples Day
October 8, 2005 by Balz

In the process of posting some information about a holiday named Columbus, an email arrived from my brother, Amestizo, wishing me a Grand Indigenous Peoples Day and suggested visiting his BLOGS. I offer Amestizo's invitation to our visitors. Enjoy the read! ... Aho
http://amestizo.blogspot.com/ - http://dejons.blogspot.com/ - http://sacredgifts.blogspot.com/

DOVER, Del.

In a decision hailed by free-speech advocates, the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision requiring an Internet service provider to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger who targeted a local elected official.

In a 34-page opinion, the justices said a Superior Court judge should have required Smyrna town councilman Patrick Cahill to make a stronger case that he and his wife, Julia, had been defamed before ordering Comcast Cable Communications to disclose the identities of four anonymous posters to a blog site operated by Independent Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Delaware State News.

In a series of obscenity-laced tirades, the bloggers, among other things, pointed to Cahill's "obvious mental deterioration," and made several sexual references about him and his wife, including using the name "Gahill" to suggest that Cahill, who has publicly feuded with Smyrna Mayor Mark Schaeffer, is homosexual.

In June, the lower court judge ruled that the Cahills had established a "good faith basis" for contending that they were victims of defamation and affirmed a previous order for Comcast to disclose the bloggers' identities.

One of the bloggers, referred to in court papers only as John Doe No. 1 and his blog name, "Proud Citizen," challenged the ruling, arguing that the Cahills should have been required to establish a prima facie case of defamation before seeking disclosure of the defendants' identities.

The Supreme Court agreed, reversing and remanding the case to Superior Court with an order to dismiss the Cahills' claims.

"Because the trial judge applied a standard insufficiently protective of Doe's First Amendment right to speak anonymously, we reverse that judgment," Chief Justice Myron Steele wrote.

Steele described the Internet as a "unique democratizing medium unlike anything that has come before," and said anonymous speech in blogs and chat rooms in some instances can become the modern equivalent of political pamphleteering. Accordingly, a plaintiff claiming defamation should be required to provide sufficient evidence to overcome a defendant's motion for summary judgment before a court orders the disclosure of a blogger's identity.

"We are concerned that setting the standard too low will chill potential posters from exercising their First Amendment right to speak anonymously," Steele wrote. "The possibility of losing anonymity in a future lawsuit could intimidate anonymous posters into self-censoring their comments or simply not commenting at all."

The standard adopted by the court, the first state Supreme Court in the country to consider the issue, is based on a 2000 New Jersey court ruling.

Under the standard adopted by the Supreme Court, a plaintiff must first try to notify the anonymous poster that he is the subject of subpoena or request for a court to disclose his identity, allowing the poster time to oppose the request. The plaintiff would then have to provide prima facie evidence of defamation strong enough to overcome a summary judgment motion.

"The decision of the Supreme Court helps provide protection for anonymous bloggers and anonymous speakers in general from lawsuits which have little or no merit and are filed solely to intimidate the speaker or suppress the speech," said David Finger, a Wilmington attorney representing John Doe No. 1.

"Delaware cases are generally respected in other states, and we'll have to see if this trend continues with these types of lawsuits, but I expect the decision of the Delaware Supreme Court to be influential," Finger added.

Robert Katzenstein, a lawyer representing the Cahills, did not immediately return a telephone message left at his home.

"This is the first state Supreme Court to squarely decide the standards to govern John Doe subpoena cases," said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney for Public Citizen, a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, who helped argue the case for John Doe No. 1. "The court's determination to require sufficient evidence before a critic is outed will go a long way toward reassuring citizens that they remain free to anonymously criticize public officials."

Steele noted in his opinion that plaintiffs in such cases can use the Internet to respond to character attacks and "generally set the record straight," and that, as in Cahill's case, blogs and chatrooms tend to be vehicles for people to express opinions, not facts.

"Given the context, no reasonable person could have interpreted these statements as being anything other than opinion. ... The statements are, therefore, incapable of a defamatory meaning," he wrote.

Dick 'CHICKENHAWK' Cheney, who lost his nerve and abandoned the United States during Vietnam, received four student deferments and one for having a child [an amazing event for a man] while attending the University of Wyoming between 1963 and 1966. "I had other priorities in the '60s other than military service," Cheney told a reporter in 1989 [Was one of those priorities Stealing from the United States people disguised as Halliburton?]

October 5, 2005 - Speaking to the Association of the U.S. Army, Cheney, joined by George Bush and Republican administration officials to bolster an American public that has grown increasingly weary of the war in Iraq told another military audience the only way terrorists can win is if the United States "lost our nerve and abandoned our mission."

More Ministers of Satan
Sent by Dahbud

Dahbud sent more research notes regarding Pat Robertson and Ministers of Satan. The first piece is a mirror of "The Despoiling of America - How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State" By Katherine Yurica, With Editorial and Research Assistant Laurie Hall, February 11, 2004. Although long, this article on Dominionism is excellent and should be read. The next article is titled, "'Pro-life' murderers" and the remaining two articles are titled. "What Is Wrong With This Picture?", which deals with a new "Religious Discrimination" taking place in work environments and "Those Understanding Christians", which questions the actions of extremist Christians.

The research notes are located at http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/mosrobertson.html near the bottom of page.

Ever since 9/11, the interest in state-sponsored acts has grown; certainly, I would rather be spending my time on other things. None of us wants our time wasted by the criminal, foolish element in society. Any decision to ignore their work, however, is a dangerous one, much like allowing dry rags to accumulate in a room where there is an oil leak.

The best approach is to minimise the risk and shield oneself from the threat of fire. Any sensible person would take the time to secure the rags, even if it was an unwelcome task. Let a fool procrastinate, and the results can be fatal. Strange as it may seem, there have been such fools in this world, it takes all kinds to bring on the kinds of events that we are made to suffer.

If, for instance, there were not only dry rags and oil together in the same space, but an arsonist lurking around as well, it would take a real fool to ignore the possibilities. Such fools have had a large part on this stage known as the Planet Earth, and they have sadly had some of the leading roles.

Take the Third Reich, for instance. When a young man fled Austria to escape military service, he went to Bavaria, where, ironically, he ended up in the army. In that institution, he found his place as a tea-boy for the officers, which job he did well. So well, as a matter-of-fact, that he was offered a promotion to the rank of Sergeant. As this involved getting sent to the front line, he chose to remain a corporal; which, by itself, did not guarantee him complete safety. On occasions when there was fighting nearby, this servile corporal would take sick, thus sparing himself the unpleasant necessity of having to face the enemy.

In later years, he became a criminal in Germany, and was sent to an institution for having caused trouble. There he wrote a lot of nonsense about himself, and his zealous supporters, in order to make him popular, made up a story about him actually fighting on the front line. In this fairy tale, the young corporal not only fought, but snuck behind enemy lines and single-handedly forced a dozen French soldiers into submission. Marching them back to the German line, he supposedly became a hero, and was awarded the Iron Cross.

Trouble with the story is that it never happened. The officers who knew this man in his soldiering days laughed at it. Sensible people might have then and there listened to the voice of the elder, more experienced soldiers, but no, they had been sold a fantasy, and they wanted to believe it. Just in case they did not, the officers who knew better were killed so that there would be no dissent. They were obviously not ‘with’ the plan, so they ended up as ‘collateral damage’.

Once out-of-the-way, the cowardly corporal told more and more lies, and as he did he was literally worshipped. So much so that when his party set fire to the Reichstag Building on the evening of 27 February, 1933, no one questioned the lies put out by his party. Thus unopposed, Adolf Hitler and his idiots took over Germany, hijacked it, whipped it, and raped it to death. Fools were in fashion, and a wise questioning of the Reichstag Fire story was not. In fact, scores of people were rounded up that very night, before the smoke had even cleared. Among them was Hans Litten, a civil rights lawyer who was hated by the ascended corporal; Litten had put Hitler on the witness stand in 1937 and had exposed the ideology of the Nazi party in a famous case. Litten, prosecuting for the people, was able to send away a number of dangerous criminals. Hitler did not forget.

Litten spent the rest of his life in jails and concentration camps, ending it in the infamous Dachau. His resolve stood the test, and he was a thorn in the side to the right-wing nutters. Not only was he, but his mother, Irmgard Litten, was a thorn as well. She relentlessly petitioned on behalf of her son, at one point getting the attention of Herman Göring’s wife, who tried unsuccessfully to help Litten. Some even tried to intercede with Hitler himself. The case of Litten was an international scandal, and it brought attention to the atrocities committed in Nazi jails, where many were interned for years without trial. The British were especially sympathetic, and Lord Allen of Hartwood wrote a petition to Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, to ask for his release.

When Litten finally died, tortured and sick, his mother took one final action; she wrote a book titled A Mother Fights Hitler. A French publisher got it to print in 1939, only to see it burned by the Nazis. The British continued to be concerned with the human rights abuses committed by their ‘cousins’, and thus saw to it that the mother’s story was heard; the English translation came out in 1940, and was reprinted at times due to demand.

The mother’s story did much to awaken the British to what was going on. In it, she makes exact notes of many Nazi figures, giving to the world a much needed inside scoop. One thing that she noted was that Göring had been responsible for the torching of the Reichstag (p. 112, 1st English ed.).

This was not the first time this assertion was made. It was in fact made as early as 1933, when Germans who realised what was happening fled to Switzerland and gave their accounts to Willi Münzenberg, who compiled the Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitler’s Terror. At that same time, the Legal Commission of the International Investigation Committee came to the opinion that it was an inside job.

This reality was ignored by the population at large; only when the world was on fire did they realise something was wrong. The fact that the Reichstag Fire was an inside job was realised too late, but, as embarrassing as it was, there were yet idiots who tried to revise history and deny this. In the 1960s, Fritz Tobias, an intelligence officer, tried to blame Marinus van der Lubbe, just as the Nazis did in the 1930s.

Tobias’ revision of history might stand, except for the facts. For those interested in those facts, they can be found in a quite recent book, titled Der Reichstagbrand: Wie Geschichte gemacht wird. This work, published ironically in 2001, shortly before 9/11, sets the record straight. In it, Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel show that not only was there a lack of evidence to substantiate the Nazi claims about van der Lubbe and Communists setting the fire, but they conclusively show that it was, as Frau Litten told us in 1939, Göring who was behind it; or one of the figures behind it. They give a precise record of the testimony of a Nazi Storm trooper named Adolf Rall, whose testimony in 1933 gave the world a first hand view of the moments before the event. Rall had stated that he personally witnessed members of his SA unit bringing explosive liquids into the building in the underground passageways that connected the Reichstag Building to the government apartments where Göring lived.

Testimony from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in 1946 supported this, naming another high ranking Nazi, Josef Goebbels, as the main architect of the crime. Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had worked as a lawyer for the political police in 1933, told the court:

It was Goebbels who first came up with the idea of setting fire to the Reichstag. Goebbels discussed this with the leader of the Berlin SA brigade, Karl Ernst, and made detailed suggestions on how to go about carrying out the arson. A certain tincture known to every pyrotechnician was selected. You spray it onto an object and then it ignites after a certain time, after hours or minutes. In order to get into the Reichstag Building, they needed the passageway that leads from the palace of the Reichstag President to the Reichstag. A unit of ten reliable SA men was put together, and now Göring was informed of all the details in the plan, so that he coincidentally was not out holding an election speech on the night of the fire, but was still at his desk in the Ministry of the Interior at such a late hour…The intention right from the start was to put the blame for this crime on the Communists and those ten SA men who were to carry out the crime were instructed accordingly.

Those ten men were then murdered to insure silence, in the Röhm putsch of 30th June, 1934; but for their leader, Hans Georg Gewehr.

No one would want anyone to question Hitler and his ‘patriotism’. Bills were passed which made sure that this was to be the case, with severe penalties for speaking out; the Nazis sure did not want to hear ‘outrageous conspiracy theories’. When the Nazis used another lie in 1939 to claim that the Reich was being attacked by Polish soldiers, the people went along with it. By that time, many of those who had spoken out, like Litten, were dead. Fools ruled supreme, and the occasional voice of reason, such as that coming from the White Rose in 1943, was stifled. The students who formed that society and handed out leaflets telling people to get rid of Hitler or be forever shamed were executed.

The psychology of that episode, and of the whole of the Third Reich, might well be looked at in view of Christ’s words to the disciples when he told them that the people persecuting them would claim that they were doing God’s will. Hitler in fact did assert his ideas in this very vein.

Today, we hear the same nonsense, the same blasphemy, from another former serviceman who somehow did not get sent to the front line when there was a war. In fact, this present idiot did not even serve all his time, but those records mysteriously went missing from the Pentagon, just as Hitler’s did when people started investigating his ‘Iron Cross’ story.

Yet, the fool on Capitol Hill is quite willing to send men to die, and to imprison people just as the Nazis did, with no recourse to a lawyer and no formal charges. One young man he sent to die also had a courageous mother, and today, history repeats itself in the form of Cindy Sheehan: a mother fights Bush. While her son, Casey Sheehan, was not singled out personally by Bush for some past act, he still died for Bush…and for Cheney, Rice, Perle, Rumsfeld and many others who did not even don a uniform. Idiots who did not go to war; in speaking of more recent history, where were any of them when Hurricane Katrina made a million people homeless? Rice was buying expensive shoes in New York, laughing and enjoying herself at shows to the point where she was rebuked by a citizen; Cheney was fly-fishing while the waters drowned the very taxpayers who pay his salary.

Good job then that Sheehan has not let this madman and his cohorts off lightly. They may brush her off as Göring, Ribbentrop and Hitler did to Irmgard Litten in the 1930s, but they too will not escape.

How will they go, and when will they go? The Third Reich had twelve years in power; are we set to take seven more years of nonsense from this crowd? Will we too end up in poverty and annihilation before we wake up from the stupidity of letting rags stand in oil?

Hopefully not; but if not, we will have to stop listening to the gatekeepers and the whore press that tries to ignore the facts. Global warming, 9/11, the anthrax letters--these and other issues cannot just be swept under the rug by the lazy among us who make an easy living reporting official announcements from the Pentagon. They, like the journalists who covered for the Nazis, are fools. True, they enjoy at present a pay cheque and some respect for their opinions, but opinions wilt in the light of facts.

Facts will set us free; free to develop energy, free to implement proper emergency management procedures and free to arrest people like Robert Strange MacNamara who helped some crazies in the US dream up their own Reichstag Fire in the early 1960; Operation Northwoods, the plan to use phony hijacking of US civilian planes and other acts of state-sponsored terror to cause a right-wing power coup in the US, was so sick it had to be kept out-of-view for forty years; by which time, most of the perpetrators had died. MacNamara lives on, and it is a wonder he is not arrested. The sight of him is suffered easily by fools who think nothing of an arsonist standing over the dry rags. They, like him, and like the Nazis who were fooled, or rather, chose to turn a blind eye to the truth about Göring, deserve the whip to their back. Let the sane and intelligent do their work.

Otherwise, we may have more phony terror exercises, carried out by rogue elements in the government who make money selling us arms and security devices. We don’t need a world full of cluster bombs and microchips, which the US is developing to insert into people’s skin. One of their police chiefs, Jack Schmidig of Bergen County, New Jersey, recently got himself chipped and asserted that all Americans would need it in order to buy or sell. And yes, it does contain a 666 encoded into it. One step further than the Nazis, who only tattoed their prisoners with an ID number.

Welcome to Kamp Amerika. There used to be a Constitution and some basic rights; now, shut up and let FEMA run your life, let the government take your property, let the police chip your skin. And don’t dare question who really did 9/11. That is a big no-no, even if you were there that day and know what really happened. William Rodriguez, who was proclaimed a national hero for his common sense and bravery on that day, spent years telling Congress about what really happened, trusting them at first to listen. Only after seeing first-hand the cover-up known as the 9/11 Commission did he realise what was going on. Now he is speaking out. But will people listen?

They certainly took their sweet time in the 1930s. And those who did are guilty of sins; if not of commission, then of omission. True, many were upstanding members of the community, some were priests, some were bishops; but their places, their priesthoods, their bishoprics were in vain, for they failed to cry out. They chose to be comfortable. They were not ‘conspiracy theorists’. They were fools.

Fools fill the stage yet again. Fools tell us to consume more oil, fools exhort us to send our sons to die, fools train our daughters to commit indecency under cover of a prison camp. Fools really believe that a plane hit the Pentagon, the major press told them so, and they believe every word in the major press; even if the major press is owned by people like Sun Myung Moon (Washington Times), Conrad Black (Telegraph), or descendants of the ardent Nazi supporter Viscount Rothermere (Daily Mail). Not to mention dozens of other papers and media sources that all have liars, pædophiles and warmongers in their ranks. Let some falsehood bear the mark of these authorities, and fools believe. They fail to question; intuition lies dead in their souls. Facts are ignored, eyewitness testimony is not taken on board. They are waiting for a Moon or a Rothermere to tell them what to believe; just as the Nazis let Hitler castrate the press and then believed the mutilated bull.

Litten, in her book, mentions times when some good-hearted German actually believed the propaganda, and it brings both tears to the eyes and laughter to the lips. One young guard who was actually a very kind young man, and who went out of his way to escort her into Daschau and give her extra time with her then dying son, told her in all simplicity that Daschau was such a good place that one professor, who was offered a good job overseas, actually turned it down because he was so comfortable in the concentration camp that he could not bear to leave. Frau Litten knew better, as she knew of the very professor in question. No doubt the young Nazi had read this incredible story in some paper. There are many journalists today who could well have written the story. A personal conversation I had with one ended in her screaming at me that the Americans ought to nuke the Arab world and give their oil to Israel. Sadly, she writes for the Independent and The Times, so she may well be telling us how the prisoners in Camp X-ray are enjoying themselves and wish to stay as long as possible. Which may be a long time; in fact, it has been a long time. Why are they not either charged or released?

Because too many people, a number of them respectable people, are too comfortable. But that comfort is only temporal. The volcano erupts, the storm hits shore. In fact that last metaphor is being watched as I write. And it will continue to be the case, as all this nonsense does not go unpunished.

I, like many a German who fled Hitler, escaped the US before Bush got in power. They fled to Switzerland, I fled elsewhere; Switzerland might have been an appropriate choice, as it was there that a relative wrote a psychological analysis of Hitler and his men. Raymond de Saussure, then head of the European Psychiatric Conference, saw the writing on the wall and cried out. At first he was regarded as a bit eccentric, but, as his notes were proven correct, he was listened to. The UK sent their intelligence services to Geneva to take him out in case the Nazis invaded, and they took his notes on board as they fought the Third Reich. De Saussure went on to New York, and had the satisfaction in his lifetime of seeing the Nazis defeated. His nephew, Victor de Saussure, however, was not so lucky, as he was to die in a concentration camp, possibly due to the Jewish ancestry on that side of the family.

Like my relative, I also took extensive notes about the personalities involved in this latest coup. Twisted and sick are the best words to describe Bush and his gang. Thieves, drunkards, child abusers; how they ever came to power is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it is wrong to blame the American people for voting them in; there is in fact a body of evidence showing that this just was not the case. Again, a parallel to the Third Reich which did not have a majority, but, by arresting members of other parties, achieved what an honest vote could not.

The burden on knowing what was going on compelled me to write a book in 2003; who knows, just maybe somebody will listen. The book was mostly on the facts showing 9/11 and the anthrax scares to be inside jobs, but in it I also made mention of what would happen to America. With a clear vision of the events, past and future, I was moved to write that the US would be like a ship tossed about by storms until they threw over Bush and his ilk, and that the country would be judged by God and held up as an example to all nations for their having presumed to use the church, for child abuse (including acts committed by Bush and Cheney), and for their blasphemous entertainment industry.

For some, it is time to act, clean out those flighty rags, arrest the arsonists and clean house from top to bottom. This will mean tossing Bush and his fools overboard, it will mean starting over on many fronts, it will mean a real investigation into 9/11 and other phony terror acts, and it will mean a change in our energy sources. The comfortable may oppose these actions, as they did in the Third Reich. But there will be some who get out and take care of the rags, choosing not to let the house burn down.

Bush wants right to use military if bird flu hits 04 Oct 2005 Dictator George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic. [This is why CLG has been busy as a bee, working on this page: http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html.

Pay particular attention to the article which reveals that researchers went to the UK in 2004 to exhume a body from the 1918 flu pandemic. And, no one asked 'Why.'] Continue reading at: http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html [Ed. Note: Please keep an eye on this link!]

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68th Anniversary of Marijuana Prohibition
October 4, 2005 by Balz

For the anniversary NORML has compiled some 'fun' facts and resources to help you get through another birthday.

• The First Pot POW
• NORML's New PodCast !
• Historical Information
• Protect Yourself

The First Pot POW

After a decade of U.S. government scare propaganda that convinced Americans that crazed Mexicans, blacks and fans of jazz clubs were pushing marijuana "reefers" on school children and honest youths, turning them into raving murderers, politicians decided to act.

The U.S. Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act. Growing and selling marijuana were still legal, but only if you bought a $1 government stamp. And that stamp was not for sale.

On the day the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was enacted -- Oct. 2, 1937 -- the FBI and Denver, Colo., police raided the Lexington Hotel and arrested Samuel R. Caldwell, 58, an unemployed labourer and Moses Baca, 26. On Oct. 5, Caldwell went into the history trivia books as the first marijuana seller convicted under U.S. federal law. His customer, Baca, was found guilty of possession.

Caldwell's wares, two marijuana cigarettes, deeply offended Judge Foster Symes, who said: "I consider marijuana the worst of all narcotics, far worse than the use of morphine or cocaine. Under its influence men become beasts. Marijuana destroys life itself. I have no sympathy with those who sell this weed. The government is going to enforce this new law to the letter."

Caldwell was sentenced to four years of hard labour in Leavenworth Penitentiary, plus a $1,000 fine. Baca received 18 months incarceration. Both men served every day of their sentence. A year after Caldwell was released from prison, he died. (From Cannabis News)

Spread the Word! Download the image for your blog

is located at: http://www.norml.org/

http://www.demonstrationer.dk/giulianivisitsdk.html

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Dr. Bombay and Tom DeLay
October 2, 2005 by Balz

Dr. Bombay (Austin, Texas) has some very interesting material regarding a new 50-minute documentary titled, "The Big Buy" which is about Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor vilified by Rep. Tom DeLay as a "rogue district attorney" and an "unabashed partisan zealot."

Please visit Dr. Bombay's BLOG which is located at: http://www.losfuzzydice.com/

To find out more about "The Big Buy" please read National Review White House Correspondent Byron York's article, "The Movie: Ronnie Earle, on a Mission from God - The Texas DA is inspired by the Bible to prosecute Tom DeLay."

Image Source: http://markbirnbaum.com/thebigbuy.net/BigBuy-SIG2.jpg

Click here: http://markbirnbaum.com/thebigbuy.net/index.html to view CLIPS FROM THE DOCUMENTRY on Mark Birnbaum's web page.

The Senator’s aide chuckled rather loudly and said, “What VA? By the time this administration is done there won’t be a VA.” Our conversation had begun with a discussion of VA’s healthcare budget and quickly came down to a single, simple point. VA is being dismantled.

Three reasons why the administration would want to dismantle VA immediately come to mind.

VA is a large-scale, publicly-funded healthcare system that works. And, VA works so well it has been used as a model to push the case for nationalized healthcare, something that strikes fear in the heart of every Republican.

Recent studies by the Rand Corporation and the University of Michigan working with UCLA and Rand prove the point that VA is efficient and provides healthcare that meets the highest standards.  If it can work for millions of veterans, it can work for millions of Americans.  That concept is antithetical to current administration thinking.

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina we learned that VA was the ONLY healthcare organization that managed to save ALL patient records.  This is because VA uses a computerized system that was backed-up on a regional level and put back online in a matter of hours.  Now that system is under attack by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN), Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.  Rep. Buyer wants to eliminate regional control of the system under the guise of saving money.

VA is ripe for privatization.  And that spells profits for private corporations.  The latest move in this direction happened last week on Capitol Hill where the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs approved S. 1182 (see Sec. 10) which would spend money from VA's healthcare budget to study outsourcing the jobs of VA healthcare workers.  The study, with VA healthcare funds going to private consultants, could cost over $140 million and lead to the loss of up to 36,000 VA jobs.  Democrats opposed it but Republicans pushed it through.

VA is part of BIG government.  And that's something this administration abhors.  GOP strategist Grover Norquist says he wants the government shrunk down so he can "drown it in the bathtub."  The problem with this is that smaller government means fewer services as well as the much touted lower taxes.  And, the jobs that are spared are outsourced and cost more to maintain because private corporations have to build in a profit margin.

So, while the concept of smaller government appeals to many, the economics fall into the "voodoo" category and the social ramifications spell disaster for those who need the programs that are cut back or eliminated.  In fact, smaller government gives less but costs more per person served.  And, I should remind Grover that 24.6 million veterans won't fit in a bathtub and the ones that do surely WILL drown.

Dismantling and privatizing VA is a big job.  But the administration has enlisted like minds to sell the concept to the public.

Last year we had the CARES commission that recommended closing VA hospitals and clinics and urged making VA's primary mission outpatient treatment.  This while the number of aging veterans, especially those from the Vietnam era, demands that more inpatient space be made available at VA facilities.

Then add the wisdom of Dr. David Chu, a DoD undersecretary, who said that the government is spending so much money on veterans' benefits that it is hurting the country's ability to fight current wars.  Rep. Steve Buyer is pushing for massive changes in VA benefits.  The Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission is studying ways to completely rewrite the book on veterans' benefits at the request of the administration.

To add to the above insults, VA has instituted a review of 72,000 PTSD claims that have already been awarded to veterans.  Why?  To increase their benefits?  I don't think so!  Also, VA has instituted the Second Signature Required policy for veterans filing claims for conditions that have the highest level of monetary award.  Again, why?  Again, I don't think so!

While VA represents a lifeline to veterans it is an ideological anchor to an administration that has gone out of its way to portray veterans' benefits as something akin to welfare.  This assault on VA and veterans' benefits will not stop.  The major service organizations know it yet all they do is go before a committee and testify that veterans are good guys and deserve benefits while their dues-paying members are waiting months for treatment at a VA facility or getting no treatment at all.

It's time for veterans to realize that the current administration has failed them.  Smaller government and lower taxes are wonderful phrases and paint a glowing picture.  But, the reality is much different than the painted picture.  VA's chronic underfunding has led to hiring freezes, layoffs and the closing of healthcare facilities.  Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of veterans are forced to go without healthcare.

Those in Congress who realize this are shouted down and voted down along party lines.  Smaller government and lower taxes are obviously more important than veterans' lives.  I pray for a change and urge my elected representatives to work for a change.

I don't look forward to a dismantled VA that puts veterans out on the street instead of in a hospital room.  But, if the administration is successful, maybe we can chat about it while we share Grover's bathtub.

William John Bennett is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, PNAC Letter sent to President Bill Clinton. A copy of the letter is located here. It is interesting to note who signed the letter and where they are now (list follows).

Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick

William J. Bennett is representative of racist Republicans who currently run the United States. Here is an email I received this morning: Bennett's web page is located here.

From: "Eric x. xxxx" <xxxxxxxx>
Date: September 29, 2005 10:47:49 PM PDT
Subject: Bill Bennett tells 1.25 million listeners "abort every black baby to stop crime"

Thursday, September 29, 2005

I, Bigot

This from scary fat-ass whitebread radio host and conservative science-fiction liemaster Bill Bennett:

"[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"

This idiot apparently boasts of syndication on 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of 1.25 million listeners.

Hmm... wonder what other folks might think about that?

How about contacting them and letting them know. His boss, Charles Mefferd (972-831-1920) and sponsors should get an earful.

And, say, why not urge the FCC (1-888-225-5322), Oprah Winfrey, The Black Commentator, AfroAmerica, Black Action Network, The National Association of Black Citizens Action, The Black Electorate, Black In America, The National Newspaper Publishers Association/Black Press of America (202-588-8764), Congresswoman Cynthia Ann McKinney (202-225-1605), Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (202-225-3816), The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Michael Moore, Bob Herbert of the NY Times, and People for the American Way to have a word or 20 with Mr.-We-Hope-Soon-To-Be-Ex-Host Bill Bennet?

Read the rest at http://www.aliberaldose.blogspot.com

Dahbud is upset at the world again, so I'm going to 'grab the reins' for a while because there is too much happening for 'it' to be ignored.

Dahbud was continuing his research on the Christian concept, "Ministers of Satan" shortly after Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ...and Nobody in their right mind, who follows Jesus's teachings, would never suggest murder.

During his search, he discovered a relationship between Pat Robertson, Charles Taylor, and Al Qaeda. This is when 'the proverbial hit the fan'. I have placed a copy of Dahbud's research notes here .

Will Bill Frist go to Jail like Martha Stewart?

Bill Frist appears to have profited more than one hundred times the amount Martha Stewart did ...on her alleged "insider trading".

Will Bill Frist go to jail like Martha Stewart or will Frist disappear like traitor Karl Rove or get another government job like Bush FEMA loser Michael Brown? Here's something worth remembering from "The Conservative Voice":

Bush's War of Terror, 9/11. Part 7.
August 30, 2005 02:18 AM EST
By Deanna Spingola
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=7875

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One very skilled good guy was FBI agent extraordinaire John P. O'Neill, formerly the Director of Counterterrorism in the New York office. He was an absolute expert on our archenemy/terrorist, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian. John O'Neill was obsessive in his bin Laden investigations. He spent long hours and demanded a great deal from himself. He was flamboyant, energetic and an effective, brilliant investigator. He felt that it was possible to destroy the Al Qaeda network but that the work had to begin in Saudi Arabia - where else if that is where Osama was from. However, in January 2001, incoming president, George W. Bush, immediately stopped all attempts by John O'Neill in his investigation of Saudi and bin Laden connections.

There are very good reasons why Bush hindered the investigations. George W. Bush had a long term business relationship with Salem bin Laden, the older half brother of Osama and the head of one of the world's biggest construction companies. His company, which he took over after the death of his father in 1972, helped to build the U.S. airfields during the first gulf war. Salem bin Laden was an investor in George W. Bush's oil company - Arbusto Energy Company in Texas. Another one of Bush's financial backers was James Bath, a Houston aircraft broker who also had ties to Salem bin Laden. In fact, it was on behalf of Salem bin Laden that James Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport.

Salem, a very experienced pilot, died in an unfortunate "freak" plane crash near San Antonio on 29 May 1988. Arbusto later became Bush Exploration when George H. W. Bush became vice president. The company was close to financial collapse in September 1984 when it merged with Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. They immediately made George W. Bush president of the company and gave him over 13% of the stock. Spectrum merged with Harken Energy in 1986 and in 1990 received a huge contract with the government of Bahrain to drill for off-shore oil which tiny Harken had never before done. This was possibly at the request of President George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) through the Saudi government with whom President Bush was closely allied. The unsuccessful project was soon abandoned.

Prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, George W. Bush sold his 212,140 shares of Harken stock on 20 June 1990. They sold at $4 a share for a total of $848,560 which was $318,430 more than they were worth. George is just really lucky that people were looking the other way when this insider trading occurred. Heck, Martha Stewart wasn't even accused of insider trading but was guilty of lying about it. I suppose this suggests that there are laws for the politically connected and then there are laws for successful business women which may be the same as the laws for the really regular folks. A book entitled: Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President was written by James Howard Hatfield and gives more details about this. Unfortunately this author will not be able to supply any more details than what is in the book as he was found dead on 18 July 2001 at the age of 43 in a motel room from an apparent prescription drug overdose, an open and shut case - no police need investigate!

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