If I may, EEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!

So I am, in Reno, Nevada at the National Property Manager's Conference enjoying a complimentary orange juice and danish at the back of the conference room. I decide "well let's see if they have wireless", and voila! they do.

I was all about to tell you about the current speaker's tips on "Crisis Management: What to do when your tenant demands their damage deposit back", when I came across this item in the New York Daily News online:

Rush Limbaugh and Peggy Noonan had people chattering at the Four Seasons the other night. The conservative cohorts, both divorced, gave each other a big hug and, according to one spy, "seemed like they were a date." Noonan says, "I'm flattered, but it's not true." Limbaugh's rep corroborates, "They're old friends"...

Granted, she loves dolphins, and he is comprised of, and spews blubber out of his blowhole daily. These two facts could lead one to believe they'd be a natural couple. However, c'mon Peggy, even your regular dose of "c-cell" lovin' has to be better than rollin' toward the side Rush is beached upon at night?

Reno -- Lovely Motel 6

Being invited to Reno to cover such an exciting convention does have its perks. In addition to getting a credential, I also received a three-night reservation at one of Reno's Motel 6's. I've discovered, that not only do they leave a light on for you, they give you all of the excitement of hearing a woman and a man in the room next to you get it on in the most vocal of ways.

Although why the man wanted to know who her Daddy was, over, and over, and over again, I have no idea. In any case, they did seem to really like each other for fifteen minutes or so.

The agenda for tomorrow's activities seems pretty exciting, however, I must say. I will have a chance to become a Certified Professional Property Manager (CPPM). Wah-Hoo!.

I sure hope Kos, Josh Marshall, and Atrios are having as much fun as I am. I also hope the convention location has wireless hot spots, because apparently the Property Manager's Convention is lacking a free-speech cage for tenants shouting things such as:

"No sub-lease, No Justice!"

"Hey, Hey, ho, ho, this Leaky faucets got to go!"

"Two, four, six, eight, my rent this month is gonna be Late!"

I'll miss it.

Richard Mellon Scaife PLANT Story of the Day

Assuming Americans are idiots for several years. Naturally, it is headline story on water-carrying "Fedora Boy".

Ah, but what are the actual facts:

Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on exactly what she meant by the term "un-American," according to a tape of the encounter recorded by WTAE Channel 4 Action News.

Heinz Kerry said "I didn't say that" several times to McNickle. She then turned to confer with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others. When she faced McNickle again a short time later, he continued to question her, and she replied, "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."

And what sort of things does the "Pittsburgh Tribune Review" write from its Editorial Page?

Check for yourself, this guy is no more than a literate Freeper, Glenn Reynolds with some grammar skills.

Hey, who owns the Pittsburgh Tribune Review?

Why it's RICHARD MELLON SCAIFE, billionaire Right-Wing Nutjob and owner and investor of a wide-variety of Right-Wing publications.

Who'd imagine such a Freeper Paper being big enough assholes to attempt to get Teresa Heinz-Kerry to say something marginally mean and then overplay it for all its worth?

Ah, the things that Fedora Boy and The Corner of Insanity & Stupidity will likely never tell you.

Flip-Flopper

First, he resisted the creation of the 9/11 Commission, then he supported it;

Second, he resisted having Condi testify, until he reversed himself;

Third, he resisted testifying before the 9/11 Commission, and then he did so (with "Direct Current Dick" making sure he didn't "Cheney" himself);

Fourth, after saying he would deliberate the 9/11 Commissions' recommendations, now he is about to use Executive Orders to put some of them into place. Of course, this will occur during the DNC Convention to keep his name in the papers. I guess operation "defrost Osama" will be put off until after Labor Day.

Boy, I tell you, I imagine this will be the talk of the Property Managers here in Reno.

Rising Hegemon's Convention 2004

Being anonymous blogboys means that either DeDurkheim or I could pretend we are covering the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

...stay tuned for our exclusive interview with...um, "excuse me officer, what do you mean get back in the cage?..."

But, of course, as the New York Times will tell you we were not invited to the convention...Apparently, it was a combination of not being asked and not asking. I prefer to salve my ego by pretending it was the latter.

But just because we are not at the Democratic National Convention does not mean that we will not be covering a convention.

This week, exclusive to Rising Hegemon, we will be giving regular reports from the National Property Managers Convention in Reno, Nevada (the place for those who think Las Vegas is too high class). Stay tuned...

Whither the Working Class Hero?

The Los Angeles Times again demonstrates that they are out of touch with most Americans by loudly proclaiming that the working class has no "true champion." Even if we accept such a notion. There are many people, activities, and experiences that not only are colored by a working class sensibility but have progressive possibilities. Do I need to list them?

Al Franken. While using an air of righteously angry psuedo-intellectual swagger, Franken says that the emperor has no clothes on and neither do his friends. Franken says what needs to be said while making a caustic joke that would warm the heart of many in the working class who remember the game of arm punching and flinching. There are many readers who are not part of an "insular left" as Crazy eyed Ann Coulter have called Franken readers.

Heavy Metal. Say what you will, but heavy metal (and I would not include all hair "metal" bands here) speaks to disenfrachisement, alienation, and isolation that most of the working class experience on a daily basis. Now, this is not to say that there are not problems with heavy metal such as the view of women and embracing of violence but look at who listens to heavy metal and their backgrounds. These people want change and they want to make it, they simply lack direction and meaningful goals.

Michael Moore. Moore uses an everyman appeal while taking on corporate giants, mean spirited money grubbing politicians, and the fanatics of the right wing who lie, cheat, and use their influence to control the world and reshape it to best meet their interests. He is beloved back home in Flint, Michigan and lets face it millions of Americans embraced Roger and Me, The Big One, and now especially Farenheit 9-11. Forget the pathetic partisan lie that Moore is rejected by the everyday people he represents, the success of F9-11 demonstrates that many people are interested in listening to what progressives have to say.

Wrestling, Nascar, Horse racing, county fairs...I can go on and on... just because many of us in the online communities want to reject such activities as corny or silly, there are possibilities for community building. In fact, if you are looking for a perfect intellectual and activist working class champion, you are going to come up empty handed. However, if you are willing to look at individuals and activities warts and all, you can find working class people and their champions. If you can look without jaundiced eyes, that is.

July 18, 2004
How the Left Lost Its Heart
Now, the working class has no true champion
By Thomas Frank

(Thomas Frank is editor of the Baffler magazine and author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" This article was adapted from that book by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt)

WASHINGTON - That our politics have been shifting rightward for more than 30 years is a generally acknowledged fact of American life. That this movement has largely been brought about by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is less commented upon.

And yet the trend is apparent, from the "hard hats" of the 1960s to the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s to today's mad-as-hell "red states." You can see the paradox firsthand on nearly any Main Street in Middle America, where "going out of business" signs stand side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush.

More AWOL stuff -- Will the Press Wake Up?

Since Republicans continue to stupidly push the Kerry purple heart story (wah!, three purple hearts, a bronze star, and a silver star...but he's a blue-blood Democrat...wah!)

But we all know that Kerry's service record pales, absolutely pales, in comparison to our MMOV (manly man of virtue) who managed to skate through a four year term of service in the National Guard, specifically to avoid going to Vietnam, and managed to cram a whole 2-years worth of actual effort into it (well that's better than he's done as President, he's managed to turn the period of September 11, 2001 to September 20, 2001 into a four year term).

According to Paul Lukasiak, the records -- and others prove that Bush continues to lie about his record and the evidence is becoming overwhelming that Bush was definitely AWOL and more. Further, not all the records are out there, and Chimpy still has yet to release them all as he promised six months ago. There is smoke and the fire is getting closer on this one.

So I encourage the Republicans to keep beating up on Kerry about a purple heart, given what is coming down the pike. Keep it in the news boys.

Maureen Dowd needs a New Picture

It is true, but today she puts up a good column -- how about that?

Maybe it's because I've been instructed to pack a respirator escape hood along with party dresses for the Boston convention. Maybe it's because our newspaper has assigned a terrorism reporter to cover a political convention. Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again). Maybe it's because there are just as many American soldiers dying in Iraq post-transfer, more Muslims more mad at us over fake W.M.D. intelligence and depravity at Abu Ghraib, and more terrorists in more diffuse networks hating us more.

Maybe it's because the F.B.I. is still learning how to Google and the C.I.A. has an acting head who spends most of his time acting defensive over his agency's failure to get anything right. Maybe it's because so many of those federal twits who missed the 10 chances to stop the 9/11 hijackers, who blew off our Paul Reveres - Richard Clarke, Coleen Rowley and the Phoenix memo author - still run things. Call me crazy, Mr. President, but I don't feel any safer.

The nation's mesmerizing new best seller, the 9/11 commission report, lays bare how naked we still are against an attack, and how vulnerable we are because of the time and money the fuzzy-headed Bush belligerents wasted going after the wrong target.

Even scarier, the commissioners expect Congress, which they denounced as "dysfunctional" on intelligence oversight, to get busy fixing things just as lawmakers are flying home for vacation.

The report offers vivid details on our worst fears. Instead of focusing on immediately hitting back at Osama, Bush officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam and ignored the memo from their counter-terrorism experts dismissing any connection between the religious fanatic bin Laden and the secular Hussein.

BTW, Attaturk's real job is intruding this Sunday morning, so today, mostly cut and paste jobs from me.

The Least Surprising Awards since this years Oscars

I think we all knew that Return of the King would clean up at the Academy Awards.

Well, the Main Organization Revealing Obvious Numbskulls (MORON) has named this years winners of the World Stupidity Awards and our Feckless leader cleaned up, like Adam Clymer, big time.

The November elections may still be ahead of him but U.S. President George W. Bush came out a big winner Friday - at the World Stupidity Awards.

Bush was a dominating presence at the second edition of the awards presented at the Just for Laughs comedy festival. Host Lewis Black, whose biting satire is a highlight of TV's The Daily Show, took pride in the recognition the United States received at the awards, saying: "we are the gold standard."

Bush took the Stupidest Man of the Year Award and for the second time in the history of the two-year-old awards won the Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet.

I offer the Chimp a congratulatory pretzel.

Plame: Who Knows?

Time for the monthly ritual of, "Say, what's going on with the Plame investigation?"

Once again, nobody knows. Although Swoopa at Needlenose and Laura Rozen at War and Piece speculate on the matter and what they guess is quite logical.

Bill Gertz at Moonie Times, an organization that along with throwing great coronations for the new messiah (which Congressional Officers cannot help but attend) has a real connection to the Bush Administration [and shouldn't that tell us something] wrote this:

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

. . . officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame's cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.

"The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone's cover," one official said. "In this case, the CIA failed to do that."

Swopa believes this article really means:

That this argument is based on thoroughly unprovable allegations with no clear news "hook," not to mention being obviously implausible (Cubans secretly breaking into sealed documents show that the CIA is not trying to protect her identity?!), just underscores how unlikely it is to be suddenly showing up in a newspaper. Some Bushite official consciously researched this and handed the information to a reliably friendly reporter at this precise moment in time. Why?

I'm fortunate enough not to have firsthand experience with whether and how people being investigated by grand juries are notified of possible forthcoming indictments, but I suspect that certain steps are required to warn them of legal jeopardy. And if anyone in the White House has gotten wind of something like this, you can bet they've thought about how to prepare the media battlefield -- and that may be the invisible line connecting the dots I've just mentioned.

Laura Rozen also comments:

...does this sound like the kind of flailing, tortured legal excuse the official who is being set to be exposed or indicted is preparing? e.g. it wasn't that damaging, even if it was a technical crime, to out the identity of an undercover officer who was already "outted" to the Russians and the Cubans? Doesn't it only make them look worse? It certainly would seem to reveal the key fact: the official who outted her identity to Novak was aware that Plame was an undercover CIA officer.

And then uber blogger Josh Marshall chimes in:

There does seem to be a rush of articles aimed not simply at discrediting Wilson but specifically at arguing that there is no legal basis for a prosecution of the folks who leaked Plame's name. Who's so concerned? It makes me wonder.

I frankly have no idea what the outcome will be with Plame. I know the gist of what happened. I know its disgusting what did happen. But, whether it will lead to a criminal indictment; a thorough scolding; or not much of anything, beats me.

I know that I have a routing interest at this point, and I know what I assume [that Fitzgerald will take path #1 or #2 both politically damaging to some degree to Bush, the first being possibly catastrophic}. However, I have to admit, while Ken Starr's office was a disgusting sieve of leaks, Fitzgerald is an admirable locked-safe.

We are all just speculating -- though I have to admit I enjoy it, probably too much.

Speaking of A.W.O.L.

Steve Gillard has the disturbing article of a lot of future Preznit's (though many of these at least saw combat first).

This is a major indicator of the legitimacy and popularity of the Chimp's Iraq policy, yet once again, it is taking liberal uber bloggers like Steve (and now Atrios and The Memory Hole) to push it.

All I can do, being proudly not a reporter, but an amateur smartass, is link to the stories.

The Buck stops with you...Private

The Washington Post puts its signature on this Editorial today, commenting on the report of prisoner abuses, aka "whitewash" that was slid under the table on the day the 9/11 Commission Report came out. Good for them, now if the rest of the SCLM is paying attention...

THE ARMY'S attempt to hold itself accountable for the abuse of foreign prisoners is off to a terrible start. On Thursday, while the media and political worlds were focused on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the Army inspector general released a 300-page summary of an investigation of "detainee operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it identified 94 cases of confirmed or possible abuse, including 20 prisoner deaths, the probe concluded by sounding the defense offered up by the Pentagon ever since the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were published: that the crimes did not result from Army policy and were not the fault of senior commanders but were "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals."

This conclusion is contradicted by the independent investigations and reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, by an earlier Army investigation undertaken before the scandal became public, and by testimony given to Congress. Oddly, it doesn't even square with some of the findings buried in the inspector general's own report, which confirm that commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan ordered "high-risk" interrogation procedures to be used on prisoners without adequate safeguards, training or regard for the Geneva Conventions.

No matter: The report effectively communicates the strategy of the military brass on the detainee affair, which is to focus blame on a few low-ranking personnel, shield all senior commanders from accountability, and deny or bury any facts that interfere with these aims. In that sense, the signal it sends to Congress is clear: The Pentagon cannot be counted on to reliably or thoroughly investigate the prisoner abuse affair. An independent probe by an outside authority is desperately needed.

To the credit of Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), the Senate Armed Services Committee quickly assembled for a hearing on the Army report, despite the not-so-subtle timing of its release, and some Republican as well as Democratic senators rightly voiced incredulity at the Army's findings. They pointed out that, while identifying no "systemic failures" in the military, the inspector general's team chose not to investigate such episodes as the hiding of "ghost detainees" from the Red Cross -- a Geneva Convention violation that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has publicly stated was authorized by him. Nor did the investigation explore the handling of Red Cross reports by the staff of the Iraq commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez -- which, rather than acting to stop abuses, reportedly tried to restrict further Red Cross access. In fact, no one above the rank of brigade commander was considered culpable, the inspector general candidly told the senators. "We think it ended there," said Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek.

Really? That's hard to square with the general's own report, which says that top U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, under pressure to collect more intelligence, "published high risk [interrogation] policies that presented a significant risk of misapplication if not trained and executed carefully." Yet "not all interrogators were trained," "some inspected units were unaware of the correct command policy," and some officers "with no training in interrogation techniques began conducting their own interrogation sessions." Moreover, some of the techniques set forth by Gen. Sanchez and other senior commanders previously had been approved only for "unlawful combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay. That "appears to contradict the terms of" the Pentagon's own legal judgments, which said some interrogation methods permissible at Guantanamo could not be used in Iraq.

All this -- and yet, purportedly, there were no failures of policy, and responsibility ended at the level of a lieutenant colonel, or a reserve one-star general. The senators who rejected this whitewash were correct: It is implausible and unacceptable. If the reputation and integrity of the Army are to be restored, some other authority will need to do better.

There is literally NO FUCKING REASON to reelect the current administration which both within the White House and within its Departments has the set the tone of brutality, deceit, and spitting on our nation's honor. They assume that God ordains what they do, while those to whom they are actually accountable, THE PEOPLE, can be lied to. All this becase they believe, with some justification, that their asses will be covered by a media that cannot fathom how to report on such a depraved and ill-thought out group of zealots.

David Brooks can judge this How?

After the torture of Oprah, I made it home from the skin peel, and bikini wax (speedo wax actually) to find the Newshour with Jim Lehrer and the weekly tete-a-tete with Mark Shields and David Brooks.

Brooks opined upon Kerry's "stiffness" and "lack of charisma".

I don't know where David Brooks' glass residence is, but I'm sure it is lovely.

Burden on A.W.O.L.

I know the Righties hate Reuters, but that's too bad, they are aces in my book for (1) Not being owned by an insane cult leader; and (2) There is no Nedra Pickler.

Their headlines also manage to accurately sum up the actual meaning of the story, and today, in connection with Bush's FOUND military payroll records, they do it again.

Bush's Military Records Fail to Dispel AWOL Charges

Of course, any of us who have followed the Chimperial Presidency know that when information (this apparently was found a few days ago) gets released on a Friday afternoon, in the middle of a major newscycle, it means there is information the Bush Administration knows is bad. They know the Jonah and his collection of ninnyhammers and Instanutjob will come through for them, but eventually it will be bad.

But, back to the story:

Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave.

His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush's Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran.

The Pentagon, which had announced two weeks ago that the payroll records had been accidentally destroyed, blamed a clerical error for previous failure to find them.

In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they have no recollection of ever seeing him there.

Bush was the son of a U.S. congressman at a time when National Guard service was seen as a way for the privileged to avoid being drafted for Vietnam War duty.

Questions over his record resurfaced this year as Bush sought, in the midst of the Iraq war, to cast himself as a "war president" in his drive to win reelection on Nov. 2.

The documents released on Friday by the Pentagon included two faded computerized payroll sheets showing Bush was not paid during the latter part of 1972 and offer no evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972.

I do think the presumption is now on Bush to pretty much prove that every word he manages to extrude out of his pie-hole (usually in scrambled syntax-challenged form) must be challenged for veracity with the burden upon him.

When is Peter Jennings going to apologize to Michael Moore by the way?

We here at Rising Hegemon are proud to be the 179th Leftist Blog to bring you an analysis of this story.

Cultural Snob

Attaturk was attending to personal hygiene and appearance yesterday (as he does every couple weeks because his body is a temple [granted it is a Temple of Elemental Evil, but still...]). This meant going to a location that had a television on, tuned to the cult leader of American Banality, O-P-R-A-H.

And who was the guest? Why the lovely Halle Berry. I was trapped in this location, forced to choose between reading Cosmopolitan, McCalls or watching the teevee, I chose the latter.

If there was a more unctuous period of broadcasting I have never seen it. Essentially it consisted of Halle Berry discussing how her ex-husband had that status because he kept boinking other woman.

I believe the correct diagnosis for such an individual would be INCREDIBLE DUMBASS. But, I'm no Charles Krauthammer.

Even FoxNews is more tolerable (except for the prime time hours). Man, daytime TV sucks, it is enough to make you happy to have to go to work.

Political Litmus Test, No lie

Members of a National Academy of Sciences panel challenged senior Bush administration officials over the propriety of asking the political beliefs, party memberships, other affiliations, and social policy positions of scientists being considered for federal government advisory committees. Apparently Chimpy's people only want like-minded scientists and policy planners in any federally funded positions. If Clenus had done this, the repugnicrats would have completely lost all bowel control and screamed until he was impeached or something. Personally I can't wait until they apply the litmus test for citizenship, hey taking the test should be fun.

Beyond War Casualties

I just saw the end of a documentary on the A&E network here, which stated that since World War II 150,000,000 people have died from war crimes around the world. If we assume for a moment that this number is correct, it is safe to assume that there were another 1-2 billion casualties of one kind or another from various movements and government. The only institutional response are war UN crime tribunals. It just boggles the mind that the US as the most heavily armed nation chose not to subscribe to such a process, or does it make sense - of sorts? Is anybody counting corporate casualties? We are not doing well at all.

"Wise Use" Movement": Neo-Con Extremism by Any Other Name

Since the 1980s a group of neo cons have been pushing for a bizarre stewardship model toward the environment. Large business interests, such as lumber and oil conglomerates, can "harvest" the environment so long as they use the raw materials "wisely" -- which roughly translates into whatever they choose if they plant a few trees or repair in modest fashion some of the damage to the environment that the extraction "procedures" create. Several conferences sponsored by industries such as oil, coal, and timber have focused on how to eliminate "non-wise" government regulation. Based on this essay published in USA Today, sounds like the movement is picking up steam.

Rules change would beat reckless path through forests
By Mary Zeiss Stange

We Montanans haven't heard much about the "wise use" movement in years. The phrase gained currency as a rallying cry among land developers and right-wing anti-environmentalists throughout the West during the early 1990s.

Then, graffiti started sprouting up in the heavily timbered western part of the state proclaiming that "spotted owl tastes like chicken." The Militia of Montana started networking with other so-called patriot groups to promote the idea of local sovereignty over the land and everything on it. After that, the phrase "wise use" more or less went underground.

But with the Bush administration's recent announcement of its intent to repeal the Clinton-era roadless rule, which protects 58.5 million acres of national forest, the insidious idea is poised to make a comeback. Indeed, in Montana, where logging, mining and tourism are vital industries, the concept and its anti-regulation, pro-development spirit remain alive.

The repeal would be the latest in a series of rollbacks of environmental regulatory standards by the Bush administration. But Americans and the environment would be the big losers.

States' rights issue

The administration argues that this is a states' right issue. It would be up to governors to devise their own roadless plans to block the development of federal land. Republicans have hailed the proposal as such. Montana Gov. Judy Martz, for example, applauded the administration's appreciation "that state, tribal and local governments are best equipped to make key decisions about the future of our public lands."

Yet Montana is one of the dozen Western states that stand to be most heavily affected by the move. The proposal was engineered by Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, a former timber-industry lobbyist. Environmental leaders are universally outraged at what the National Environmental Trust's Philip Clapp has called "the biggest giveaway to the timber industry in the history of the national forests."

Republicans have been at pains to cloak their actions in the rhetoric of environmentalism.

Roads, they argue, are good for forests. The new, pro-development policy is, as Arizona House Speaker Jake Flake told reporters, "totally essential to getting into thinning forests so that they don't all burn."

But, according to the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, twice as many Western forest fires start in areas with roads. And they are far more likely to be caused by human beings than by lightning, which is nature's way of thinning forests. So it's not difficult to deduce that the best way to protect the forest is to prevent the building of more roads that intensify human access.

Limiting access

This doesn't mean keeping people out of the woods. It just means you can't drive there. In June, at the annual meeting of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, National Rifle Association President Kayne Robinson excoriated environmental groups for their support of roadless wilderness. They were, he said, "trying to hoodwink hunters into voting for gun-ban candidates," and "it's pretty hard to hunt without guns."

The politics of gun control aside, it's more likely that the hunters Robinson had in mind find it pretty hard to hunt without their pickups and all-terrain vehicles, since access to some of the best public hunting land - in roadless areas - is restricted to those on foot or horseback. Those areas provide essential habitat and breeding grounds for game species increasingly feeling the encroachment of human development.

Robinson is as disingenuous regarding the ecological realities of roadless forests as the Department of Agriculture, whose mandate it is to manage the areas for the people.

In June, the Bush administration finalized, over Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's objections, one of the largest ever timber sales in the roadless Klamath-Siskiyou region. This month, a logging plan was announced for a roadless area within Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

In light of these moves, the Bush administration's rewriting of the roadless rule looks to be, at best, an afterthought, and, at worst, downright deception.

Any way you cut it, it amounts to unwise use of the last, best places Americans have to call our own.

Mary Zeiss Stange teaches at Skidmore College and ranches in southeastern
Montana. She is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Wolfowitz MUST BE FIRED

Of course I have felt this way for some time, but the fact is that Wolfowitz has been an unmitigated disaster -- along with the rest of the PNAC crowd, Feith, Carbone etc.

Yesterday the 9/11 Commission reinforced what had been said about Wolfowitz before, that he advocated going into Iraq RIGHT after the September 11, 2001 and put up the most bullshit laden of arguments. Here is the example:

A. Pages 334-336

(1) First meeting in Camp David shortly after 9/11:

[Rice] recalled thatin the first Camp David session chaired by the President, Rumsfeld asked what the administration should do about Iraq.Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during "this round" of the war on terrorism.

(2) Powell on Wolfowitz in the short-term wake of 9/11:

Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz--not Rumsfeld--argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked.66 Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq was behind 9/11. "Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with," Powell told us."And he saw this as one way of using this event as a way to deal with the Iraq problem."

(3) He continues to behave like a stupid zealot (which he is of course)

Within the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz continued to press the case for dealing with Iraq.Writing to Rumsfeld on September 17 in a memo headlined "Preventing More Events,"he argued that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum priority should be placed on eliminating that threat.Wolfowitz contended that the odds were "far more" than 1 in 10...The next day,Wolfowitz renewed the argument, writing to Rumsfeld about the interest of Yousef 's co-conspirator in the 1995 Manila air plot in crashing an explosives-laden plane into CIA headquarters, and about information from a foreign government regarding Iraqis' involvement in the attempted hijacking of a Gulf Air flight.

B. Page 256, thanks to Sadly, No!:

Tenet told us that in his world "the system was blinking red." By late July (2001,) Tenet said, it could not "get any worse." Not everyone was convinced. Some asked whether all these threats might just be deception. On June 30, the SEIB contained an article titled "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real." Yet Hadley told Tenet in July that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting. Perhaps Bin Ladin was trying to study U.S. reactions. Tenet replied that he had already addressed the Defense Department's questions on this point; the reporting was convincing.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons to fire Wolfowitz based on his testimony supporting the Iraqi war in late 2002/early 2003, but rarely has such a woeful failure been allowed to keep his job. But then again, its also been some time since we had a President to match such a boob.

Weeze is Safer thanks to My Strategery

Ah, yes, July 22, 2004, a day which will go down in history as the day after July 21, 2004.


"9/11 Commissions about to issue its report?....Gotta go!"


Thomas Kean, Chairman of the 9/11 Commission listens to President Bush express his "thanks to this guy and this guy and all the other guys for this, um, book, which doesn't have nearly as many pictures as My Pet Goat."


"Who has two thumbs and is going to be Vice-President? This guy!"


President Bush watches as Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove head out to visit the Washington Headquarters of the Kerry-Edwards Campaign.


"And then Mr. President, on the morning of November 2nd...Mr. President, you can wipe that off your shoe later, this is important."


In preparation for next week's convention Alabama's lone white Democrat picks out his seat. (C'mon people its a joke for godsake!)


President Bush looks toward his advisors for assurance that the sign and the crowd behind him doesn't mean he's about to be arrested.


In a big day for the Kerry campaign, he received the endorsement of the delegate from Hobbiton.


You hear that Tom? They are yellin' "You Suck!", that's good right?