The MojoWire

Mojowire for 07.24; vol. 2, no. 12

J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 2, No.12... I'm Mojo...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, July, 24, 2004, Day 1,198 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, the we here at the Mojowire are going to do our best to scare the living hell out of you. Think you are going to get to vote in November? Think again citizen. Even now folks from Homeland Security are lobbying Congress to allow them to cancel elections in case of attack.

J. Next, in case you were wondering exactly what the nature of the Republican party in Congress when it comes to who really supports the troops in a meaningful way. Here's a hint. Congress voted on party lines to deny military family housing expansion. Guess which side voted against it...

S. Then Strychnine gives the detailed technical data on the effects of mudslinging, when done with a rail gun from the moon, by relating more of the recent horrible tale of how the Bush Administration treats those with whom it disagrees. This week's contestants, Jamie Gorelick, Sandy Berger and returning character in jeopardy champion Joe Wilson.

J. Finally this morning. Attenion all wire heads, there may be swarthy brown men near you even as we speak. They are everywhere, they are into everything. They might be in the car next to you on the freeway, they might be in the booth behind you at Dennys, they might try to fly on the same domestic flight as you... be afraid, very afraid... let Anne Jacobsen show you the way...

...So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing...

RELAX CITIZEN ALL IS WELL
J. Here's what bugs me the most about this story. They are not exactly being subtle. I know this will probably not be new for anyone hearing this, but for me at least, I felt the need to let one rip, that my voice might travel through the dark aether as a warning to other civilizations who might follow in our footsteps.

DeForest B. Soaries. Remember that name friends and neighbors. Thats the guy who first tipped us off that the final act of the American Experiment was about to begin. About three or four weeks ago, this Radical Conservative Baptist Minister from New Jersey was asking the Department of Homeland Security for some official guidelines on canceling elections in the event of a terrorist attack.

Which, in of itself might be laughable had not the Right Reverend Soaries also been moonlighting on his congregation as the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as mandated in the Help America Vote for Bush Act of 2002. You see the problem, the election czar is asking how he can cancel elections.

To set the context, this was nearly a week before Tom Ridge and the Untouchables made their breathless pronouncements that the dread Al Qaeda death eaters with the laser beam eyes and kung fu grip flying their Iraqi made Flying Saucers deployed from their Sub Orbital Battle Cruiser, the Bill Clinton,,were planning to disrupt the American electoral process with fire, sword and blood.

Or words to that effect.

But too late, for those of us who are watching closely. We know Soaries was already looking for ways to cancel the election based on perceived threats to the United States before Ridge ever opened his piehole to utter a warning.

It was then that Ridge confirmed that they were working out ways to postpone or cancel the elections if the terrorists did hit us with a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process. This little soundbite managed to make its way into the mainstream reporting on the homeland security for a couple of days, especially once people put the pieces together and got that cold chill up their spine.

Then there were people like us who were just in the process of wondering how the Bush administration would steal another election, when the news hit us. The easiest way to steal an election if youre an incumbent? Just cancel the damn thing. That's right, have the Court or your punk minions in Congress grant you some plenary emergency powers and then we've got ourselves a ball game.

So it then became the whole "so what do you think the Bushies are planning to blow up in October?" I mean, this is really almost out of Tom Clancy-land, for those of you who have read Red Storm Rising as many times as I have.

S. Yeah, I know this is just letting our inner conspiracy theorists off the leash to run and bark and chase squirrels up trees. I get that. And to be fair, in the wake of the meager national mainstream press this generated, Soaries offered a long winded statement on how "There are no circumstances that could justify the postponement or cancellation of a presidential election in the United States."

Of course his press release was talking about people blowing up polling places, while Ridge's statements were talking about attempts to influence the political thought of the electorate.

Still, Soaries words might have been comforting but for one disquieting fact that hangs in the air like a bad smell no amount cheap perfume from the press office can quite get rid of.

In the wake of the hysteria surrounding Ridge's announcement that Al Qaeda plans to fly a Michael Moore shaped blimp full of radioactive xenite gas into the World Series to disrupt our electoral process, one very odd thing happened. Or rather didn't happen.

Ridge refused to raise the threat level from Yellow to Orange, or for those on the Japanense Monster Attack threat level, from condition Mothra to condition Ghidara. Even when asked, all Ridge could do was spew a breathless stream of bureaucratic consciousness designed to paralyze his victim with its utter dada-like nonsense:

"Well, we wouldn't necessarily broadcast to the terrorists what it would take for us to raise it to Orange, but we know internally that there are a couple of tripwires that might cause us to pull everybody together to begin that whole process. We share with you a -- I've said this on many other occasions. We churn information daily. We begin discussing that information in the White House, and then twice a day the intelligence community, by secure video, goes over not only the threat information of the day but the threat information that's been accumulated over a period of time. And I think we all know internally the kind of environment which includes perhaps the nature of reporting or the amount of reporting, but we have in our own minds what the tripwires might be for us to begin that process."

Yeah, whatever Tom, up the voltage.

But out in the real world, when the threat level goes up, certain behind the scenes things happen that create extra layers of security on the national infrastructure. So the question becomes why, in the face of credible information of an attack allegedly in the final planning stages, would we not increase the layers of security?

Sure there might be some legitimate answers to this, maybe Ridge is just hedging his bets, maybe this was Ridge trying to influence voters, and we may, in fact, just be harboring a dark fascination with the end of the world, but given this administration, and the fact that they have buried the needle in all other measures of mendacity and corruption, we simply don't have the heart to laugh off the obvious answer.

Yeah, it wouldn't be so that the attack came off without a hitch, would it? Would it?

LET'S PLAY CAMPOUT
J. Here is just another fine example of the People's House in action. You know, for more than a year now, we have been beating on Congress for abrogating their role both as an oversight for the executive branch, as well as for their utter dereliction of duty when it comes to dealing with our national budget issues and priorities.

To that end, we have suffered through a lot of pro-patria chest pounding in the last four years about support for our troops, but apparently when it comes time to put their money where their mouths are, these same scumbags who wrap themselves in the flag and get photo ops with the troops, turn around and vote against men and women in uniform.

The House of Representatives voted along party lines to block a $500 million expansion in military housing from a $10 billion military construction appropriations bill Wednesday.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that without the money, the housing expansion program is expected to exhaust its current $850 million spending limit by November. Supporters said that would delay new housing for 50,000 military families over the next two years.

The really lovely part in that, is that this was on the same day that Army announced they are moving up their recruiting classes from their enlistment deferment dates and we will soon see something of a baby boom in the Army. Yeah, because those families will have no problems living in tents in the park or in residence hotels while their spouses are getting their heads shot off in far away lands.

One of the extra special treats of this circus of despair was the Republican leadership in the House pulling yet another procedural club out the bag and holding the vote open for an extra 20 minutes or so; just enough time for their leg breakers to beat the consciences out of the last few Republicans who still had a tenous grasp on right and wrong at that point and round up their votes.

But wait, this is really my favorite part. In what Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri understasted as cynical move the House then passed a stand alone appropriation a short while later to replace the money. So you might ask, what are you guys venting spleen about. They fixed it, right? Right?

Not so fast there Diamond Jim, you see, the 412-0 vote was purely cosmetic. There was not a person voting for that second measure who did not know full well that the Senate would never approve a stand alone $500 million appropriation for military housing, unless it was part of the larger overall military construction package.

If the representatives were so concerned about taking care of our troops and their families, why not just leave the appropriation alone in the original bill. This is a perfect metaphor for George Bush's carrier landing photo op stunt. This was not supporting our troops, this was complete fantasy, a marzipan illusion, dressed up in a sharp green flight suit with the straps extra tight to make that great manly bulge.

Votes like this should be a signal to every active duty service member, reservist and veteran in America about what Republicans in Congress are doing for them.

S. This was completely shameful. Those who voted to kill the appropriation owe an apology to every single person who wears the uniform of their country. And for those of you listening down behind the Orange Curtain, can you possibly even think that you dont know how your local choads voted on this? Here's a hint: They voted against the troops:...again!

Nearly every Republican in Congress has some version of let's support our troops pablum on their website, appearing in their campaign literature and in their droning sonombulist special order speeches on CSPAN.

Well, guys, were still waiting for you to do just that. Anytime you feel like really stepping up and giving a hand to military families, you just feel free to get right in there and do it.

No no, thats okay, well just wait please, just go ahead

Yeah, I know, its not like we were really going to hold our breaths, because a quick rundown of the major accomplishments of this Congress relative to vets is a political nightmare. Just the thought that these people blithely allowed the President to ship these kids halfway around the world, then are busy at home trying to find more money for rich people by taking it away from these same kids is sick on a level that we even find shocking.

And thats how its been down the line, from military combat pay, to job protection for reservists, to equipment in the field.

There were the cuts to veterans benefits of every kind, and then the Republicans have been turning around and running ads about Osama Bin Kerry voted against body armor for the troops because of a blind hatred of America.

Screw these guys, they have all the charm of road kill.

There are times when Michael Moore actually does make a lot of sense. If Congress ever declares war or allows the President to play army-man with his military, then everyone who actually votes for the resolution allowing the use of force must send their own children or spouses directly to the front lines, or in cases of members who are childless and unwed, they must then go themselves.

There is absolutely no excuse for the shabby treatment that veterans have received by our nation. There was this aura of mystic wonder around soldiers who came home from World War II. Granted, no one wanted to know how damaged some of these guys were; they won, they defeated the evil that was good enough for the moment.

But in the ensuing years as guys came home from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and numerous other places around the world, it seems like we wanted to know less and less about them. Sure, we all liked Veterans and Memorial Days off, but after that, who cared?

And its not like a lot vets went around making unreasonable demands, either. How about just having the Congress honor the agreements they made with them in the first place? Or taking care of them and their families like they were promised?

The only thing worse than those broken promises is then watching these vermin turn up on Fox News or the Washington Times to excoriate those who dont want to send these kids to war in the first place and paint themselves all red, white and blue when at the end of the day, they couldn't care less about the vets other than making sure they have plenty of pictures of them in their election brochures.

Yeah...these guys just suck.

And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

MUD...FROM A RAIL GUN
S9. Greetings once again, space travelers, from low earth orbit's most worker friendly libertarian socialist utopia (as voted by the readers of Very High Times Magazine), where organization isn't just a political posture -- it's a survival mechanism.

We've been howling our heads off with laughter lately, watching the news-like verbiage product coming spinning up the gravity well from Washington, D.C. We have to laugh, of course, because crying over spilled beer is a pointless activity. The thing that has us most amused these days is the ongoing question about whether American "movement conservatives" are feeling a sense of desperation about the November election.

One school of thought that is making the rounds up here is that the wingnuts are on the verge of cracking up like a supersonic balsa wood glider, they are so desperately losing. Personally, I don't quite buy it -- but I'm willing to go along if it will bring more players into the betting pool.

Specifically, the story that has us chittering about the possibility of Republican Party discord is the obvious smear job the So-Called-Liberal-Media is running against the big three controversial
figures in the story of the 9/11 Commission. The three victims of this smear are Jamie Gorelick, Joe Wilson and Sandy Berger. The theory is that the R's know their White House comes out looking pretty incompetent in the report, so they feed the mainstream press a series of brain-dead non-story controversies that are tailor-made to inspire the kind of pack-frenzy journalism that made the American media into the laughing-stock of the world.

Check it. They blamed one of the commission members, Jamie Gorelick, for the long-standing policy of maintaining operational separation between the intelligence and law-enforcement arms of the D.O.J. Ms. Gorelick wrote a memo clarifying the policy, and now suddenly she's personally responsible for the fact that the Millennium Bomb plot might have been foiled if it hadn't been for her. Oh wait, it was foiled, wasn't it? We forget up here on S9 Station.

Not to be content with that, they also smeared Joe Wilson. Wilson is the guy the CIA sent to Niger to find out if there was anything to the story that Iraq might have been trying to buy uranium on the side. He came back with a definitive ''No, what the hell are you people thinking?'' and the White House went gangland on his family. They blew the cover of his CIA agent wife just to make an example for him. His story held up to serious analysis, however, so now we have to watch as
he is hideously smeared in the press. They're calling him a liar -- even though his story is as clean as the day is long. If they repeat it enough times, though, it'll be true anyway.

And finally, there is the Sandy Berger story. This one is just completely loopy. Anybody still flogging this story ought to be considered eligible for the Clockwork Orange therapy -- just bind them up in straightjackets, bracket their heads in front of a big projection screen, tape open their eyelids, dose them with industrial hallucinogens, and make them watch Scarborough Country while delivering electric shocks to their favorite body parts every time Joe tells a whopper. Berger broke the protocol at the National Archives. No documents were lost or destroyed, the 9/11 Commission has no complaints and the FBI investigation has been stalled since October. But pay no attention to that -- Sandy Berger mishandled classified national security documents. How do we know he didn't betray the United States and disclose sensitive and secret information about the Millennium Bomb plot to the terrorists? It would be just like Clinton's National Security Adviser to turn out to be a terrorist, wouldn't it? Of course now, but that's what the so-called-liberal-media would have you believe.

The point of all these smears is to do one very simple thing: overwhelm the press with so many lies and so much irrational doublethink that it will be incapable of covering the real content of the 9/11 Commission report -- content that was already diluted by administration stonewalling and official obfuscation -- that if the Bush administration had not been stroking its big chalootie for the kicking of Saddam's rear end, then it might have had a very good chance of unravelling the 9/11 plot before it had successfully murdered over 3000 Americans and guest workers from friendly nations.

Like I said, some people will look at this triple smear-job and say to themselves: self, you gotta know this is a sure sign that the R's are desperate. They gotta be desperate. Only desperate people would engage in the politics of personal destruction like this.

You would be wrong, unfortunately. The truth is that the R's (at least, the ones that are currently running the show at party headquarters) do this kind of thing just to add their personal touch to
the story. They smear people because it's the only thing they know to do anymore.

Believe me. They're not feeling desperate yet. If they were feeling desperate, we would be at Homeland Security Threat Condition Code Elmo right now, and there would be paramilitary gangs driving around our neighborhoods in jacked up four-wheel-drive suburban assault vehicles
enforcing the new discipline and order.

They're not desperate. Listen to them closely. They're gloating.

CAN'T TRUST THE BROWN ONES
J. So wireheads, been keeping a close eye on your swarthy fellow citizens? Anne Jacobsen, self annointed free lance writer at WomensWallStreet.com took a Domestic flight full, gasp..swarthy Middle Eastern guys.

As she recounts in her laughlingly titled piece, "Terror in the skies", she engages in bout of paranoia..errr..vigilance that would give a John Ascroft a stiffie, she became rapidly alarmed as a group of Middle Eastern Men boarded the aircraft. Pat Smith at Salon.com lays it out pretty succinctly:

What follows are six pages of the worst grade-school prose, spring-loaded with mindless hysterics and bigoted provocation.

Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327, seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make trips to the bathroom.

The author links the men's apparently irritable bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.

"What I experienced during that flight," breathes Jacobsen, "has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats."

Intriguing, no? I, for one, fully admit that certain acts of airborne crime and treachery may indeed open the channels to a debate on civil liberties. Pray tell, what happened? Gunfight at 37,000 feet? Valiant passengers wrestle a grenade from a suicidal operative? Hero pilots beat back a cockpit takeover?

Well, no. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Turns out the Syrians are part of a musical ensemble hired to play at a hotel. The men talk to one another. They glance around. They pee.

That's it? That's it.

Here, according to KFI.com, was the event as described by the Federal Marshalls on the aircraft:

Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, "overreacted," to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.

The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service.

S.Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women.

"The lady was overreacting," said the source. "A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane."

The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen's actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.

So, no big deal right? Some Red State Blue Hair has a Fox News induced breakdown on a domestic flight when a group of Syrian musicians has the unmitigated gall to use the lavatory and congregate at the back of a plane. Wrong! Right Wing Media peed in it's collective diaper over this story:

Talk Radio,(of course), was unanimous in it's demand to profile aggesively. Profiling to Limbaugh Fan or Savage Fan is bascially strip search anyone non-europeon or well, French, and keep them in a special class at the back of the aircraft with plastic forks and armed guards pointing at their gentials. Even the "So Called Liberal Media" (thank you Dr. Alterman) got into the act. Here are some of the quotes Mr. Smith found from them:

"Harrowing piece"
"The frightening true story"
"Disturbing account"
"Riveting article"
"An absolute must-read"

Annie is still clinging to her claim that the Syrians were terrorists on a "dry run", even though the National Review Online, (no really) posted a story that found this out about the Syrians:

Clinton Taylor, a lawyer/Ph.D student/college news co-director who decided to track down the Syrian musians/terorrists. He found (via Google) a casino near San Diego which advertised ethnic musical entertainment. By calling them, and then a rep for Anthem Artists, he seems to have discovered that the notorious Restroom Gang was actually the band for one Nour Mehana, the "Syrian Wayne Newton."

Yes, Anne and her dufe husband were terrified at 30,000 feet by Wayne Newton.

The reason we pimp you this HORRRRRRible story is to not to merely point out that Anne is a dumbass, but that how the right has melded it's racist "Islamo-brown fear" with efforts to improve domestic security. It dovetails nicely with their obsession with illegal immigration, which they manage to blame everything from high taxes to their bloated light beer gut.

As Dr. Strychnine pointed out, Domestic acts of terror like the anthrax attacks have disappeared from the media radar. Apparently, as he notes, because the perpetrators were not swarthy enough for the attention of Fox News or Talk Radio. As the new film Outfoxed reveals, Fox News in particular has a different attitude towards Domestic Terrorists. Here is one of the Memos Fox News Corporate handed down to reporters about Rudolph.

"We have a good Perp walk video of Eric Rudloph we should use. We should not assssume that anyone who supported or helped Rudolph is a racist. No one's in favor of murder or bombing of public places. But feelings in North Carolina may just be more complicated than the New York Times can conceive. Two Style Notes: Rudolph is charged with bombing an abortion clinic, not a health clinic, and TODAY'S HEARING IS NOT AN ARRAIGNMENT IT IS A PRELMINARY HEARING."

Where do you begin with this? Well, Let's be clear who Rudolph was and what he did. Rudolph belonged to a radical domestic terror group that openly adv ocated the murder of Heatlh care workers and physicians at clincs that provided prenatal care, including abortions. Yes, Mr. Murdoch, those are indeed health clincs. Rudolph planted two bombs at the clinic. The first to kill and maim Doctors and Nurses, along with their pregnant patients, including children, and another bomb to kill Emergency Responders, Police and Firemen, several of whom were killed in the second blast.

Contrarty to the Fox memo, Rudolph and his group openly advocated killing in public places, and they have a wide following in the anti abortion movement. It.s a nasty slander on North Carolina that they would in any way be "complicated in a way that would infer they support anything Rudolph did or supported. Remember, he also planted the bomb that killed and maimed at the Olympics in Atlanta. That's an act of Terror Fox News, in case that memo never made it to the anchor desk.

So Rudolph, who murdered dozens of people, should not be slandered and the freak bats who support him should not be called out for being the racist scum they are, and they are racists by the way. And god forbid we should let on that Clincs that provide abortions for the most part provide prenatal and Pediatric care, that might ignite an outbreak of journalism and truth in the Fox Newsroom. If that happens they will never get the smell out of the carpet.

Domestic Terror is as alive today and is it was when Rudolph and McVeigh killed innocent people to live out their right wing crank fantasies. Funny, but you haven't heard dick from John Ashcroft about the threat of Domestic terror. Apparently Anthrax letters are a harmless prank when Americans send them.

As David Neuiart at Orcinius.com points out, Anne Jacobsens brown swarthy man paranoia is dangerously similiar to the madness that swept the West Coast after Pearl Harbor. He relates some of the madness from his book Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of Japanese-American Community: to wit:

A broad array of federal and local officials chimed in, often trumpeting unfounded rumors to the press as stated fact. Navy Secretary Frank Knox, for instance, had declared to reporters that the Pearl Harbor disaster had been a direct result of "fifth column" activity by Japanese-American spies in Hawaii (a report that later proved to be completely groundless).

Not surprisingly, politicians of nearly every stripe joined in the headline-grabbing spree. The old anti-Japanese legends of the 1920s surfaced for a fresh retelling: The immigrants were insular mercenaries who intended to return to Japan anyway. Their children were all thoroughly indoctrinated subjects of Tojo. They could never be "American." And they secretly hated us.

A popular consensus had already been reached, confirming suspicions many had held for years: The "Japs" in their midst were spying for Japan.

"People in positions where they could influence the population, they sure did," recalls Tosh Ito. "I think people listened a lot more to them. There was a lot of hysteria because of the media, too." For a war-happy press anxious for a local angle on the conflict, the prospect of a West Coast invasion made great-selling copy. The Los Angeles Times ran headlines like "Jap Boat Flashes Message Ashore" and "Caps on Japanese Tomato Plants Point to Air Base."

Pretty soon, everyone was getting into the act. Reports of "signals" being sent out from shore to unknown, mysterious Japanese boats offshore began flowing in. One report, widely believed at the time, came from someone who heard a dog barking somewhere along the shore of Oahu, and believed that it was barking in Morse code to an offshore spy ship.

So, yeah, crazy right wing couples so paranoid and fearful Air Marshalls are tempted to gun them down to shut them up are ulitimately easy to ignore. But, coupled with the racist profiling of Caucasion challenged Americans, the disgraceful apoligism and spin of right wing domestic terror by Fox and other outlets, and the growing resemblance to the madness of iternment, we need to be vigililent against the fear and paranoi emanating from the Republican Party, because it CAN happen here...

J. It's 101 days until election day and our patriotic thought for the week is: honoring commitments to our vets, means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft says... “Dankeshein...sing it hippy, you know the words...”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...

Mojowire for 07/03; vol. 2, no. 11

J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 2, No.11... I'm Mojo...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, July, 03, 2004, Day 1,184 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, we celebrate the pending birthday of our fine nation by examining the entrails left by the Supremes as they evicerated much of the Bush Administration's GTMO Habitrail for Wayward Swarthy Feriners and the Men Who Love Them.

J. Next, the Bush administration is trying their darndest to get the tax exempt status of their favorite protestant churches yanked, by putting out a demand that these congregations turn over their membership lists and getting the good reverends to start organizing on their behalf.

S. Then Strychnine beams down instructions to the earthly on how to put the final stakes in the Patriot Act II. His horrifying instructions include the dismemberment of the legislation into six separate pieces and buried beneath the silvery full moon... and even then, he suggests you have someone taste your food for a while.

J. Next this morning we reveal yet more hideous mendacity from the Bush administration. Remember the "Houston Miracle" that was supposed to be replicated by Education Secretary and former Houston School Czar Rod Paige. It turns out that the Houston Miracle was all lies but don't worry, Texas did manage to really excel in one particular thing: building prisons.

...So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing...


THEY'D MAKE GREAT PETS
J. This week, our favorite pre-fab band, The Supremes, took on a paternal roll and told W. and his gang that he can't keep pet Muslims down on the GTMO part of the ranch, because he can't take care of them right.

Let's get everyone up to speed here on this one. The high court ruled this week that our Constitutional understandings of Habeous Corpus, as tattered as they are right now, have not been entirely sent out to the scrap heap of history and that we can not just disappear people into dark holes.

That's right Rummy, your bondage fetish is not going to become the law of the land, for a little while at least. Put the manacles and nipple clamps back in your desk and for the love of God, stop touching yourself, you'll make the saints cry.

The final score at the end of the week, U.S. Constitution 3, facist dirtbags in the National Security Commisariat 0. Unless you want to count the Padilla case as a draw. They broke down like this, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Reversed and remanded, Rasul v. Bush/ Al Odah v. United States, reversed and remanded and Rumsfelf v. Padilla reversed and remanded.

Padilla was sent back down to the minors because the Supremes decided to hand out a consolation prize to the government by refusing to rule on the merits, instead saying Padilla was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. But most commentators look at it in the context of Hamdi, et. al. and believe that it's just postponing the inevitable punking of Rummy in Padilla as well.

Yeah, we could be all sarcastic about it and make some really juvinile attempt at pop culture humor, but this is too important for that, so we'll just let Justice Stevens do the talking here, speaking for the court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld:

''At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society. Even more important than the method of selecting the people's rulers and their successors is the character of the constraints imposed on the Executive by the rule of law. Unconstrained Executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber. Access to counsel for the purpose of protecting the citizen from official mistakes and mistreatment is the hallmark of due process. Executive detention of subversive citizens, like detention of enemy soldiers to keep them off the battlefield, may sometimes be justified to prevent persons from launching or becoming missiles of destruction. It may not, however, be justified by the naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract information. Incommunicado detention for months on end is such a procedure. Whether the information so procured is more or less reliable than that acquired by more extreme forms of torture is of no consequence. For if this Nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny.''

It is even worth noticing that the dread Justice Scalia, found the administration's actions over the top. Look, when your game is too severe even for Big Tony "The Chad" Scalia, that's some seriously rough trade. Back to the bar, please, brother, your scaring the straights."

While the court was not quite the complete upstanding shield for all we hold to be good about America -- for instance, they still decided that pre-trial confinement without charges was somehow acceptable -- they still held that the basic idea that the awesome power of the state is primarily vested in its ability to physically control its populace; its police powers, and that in our country, those powers are specifically curbed.

That's a fundamental part of the deal here. It's why we're here. The Supremes aren't idiots, they can read a newspaper or look at the news as well as anyone. Just how much are people prepared to take at any one time. King George didn't know, but the authors of the Constitution did, and that's why they took pains to prevent that kind of tyranical power being vested unchecked in the executive.

Even in spite of the administration's somewhat pyhrric victory for pre-trial detention, the Supremes laid a pretty down a pretty good line, saying that while in war it is legitimate to hold a prisoner to prevent their return to the battlefield, the notion that Hamdi could be held indefintely until the end of the War on Terror was ridiculous. And here's the key sentence: "Certainly, we agree that indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized..

S. Look, it's been 200-some years, why are we even talking about this. Yeah, I know, it seems like we are talking about these things alot these days, but this adminsitration has really got the hots for seeing you in bright orange jump suit, shoveling coal into the national furnace of the new New American Mercantile Empire...

Of course, this is all under current law, and as you will all be horrified to learn in a few minutes when Strychnine descends the well in a wrath of firey radio waves, this court itself may have run afoul of certain new pieces of legislation floating around the halls of power.

And John Ashcroft will be forced to arrest the Supremes. Yeah, Tony The Chad doin' his time at the GTMO Gray Bar... sure, there's some grim satisifaction in that. But not enough to quell the fear that has been creeping up the spine and implanting itself deep in the lizard medulla for the past four years.

We all deal with it differently. Most Republicans, when they witness the heavy hand of government, like cops beating a guy like a pinata with metal flashlights immediately retreat to denail: sure, dude had it comin' right? Right? Cops would never do that to me...I'm a good, law abidin' Republicoid, freshly scrubbed, newly coded and ready to serve Maximum Leader, no questions asked.

Then again, some of us just go find old friends with radio shows and shout real loud to whoever will listen before sunrise on Saturday mornings...

But this is also why we have to be happy with even little victories. Every little bit helps. Such as the other notable decision out of the Supremes last week, that while not directly related to terrorism, was at least related to unrestrained police power, United States v. Petane and Missouri v. Seibert. These two cases, in a nutshell.

We took one in the shorts in the first case, Petane, where the Supremes ruled that as long as the cops didn't admit any "statements" you made into evidence, they could beat all the physical evidence they wanted out of you without Miranda warnings, and that's all good.

In Seibert, we did a little better: The police have a little technique they like to use, based on the "critical moment" and "custody" tests. The idea is that you only need to be aware of your Miranda rights if you are actually in imminent danger of being deprived of life, liberty or property. However, if the cops just want to have a friendly chat...you know, "to clear a few things up" then you can incriminate yourself all day long and the cops can use it court.

No more, however. The Supremes plugged that loophole pretty well, saying, despite some differences in general scope of issue, that if the cops yank you off the street to sweat you under the lights, they are not just having a friendly conversation. This has been a spreading practice as a work-around for cops who are too lazy, stoopid or just infected with too much popular culture to understand that Miranda protects them as much as it protects the suspect.

So I guess, the only thing we really have to wonder is if the various levels of executive government, from the current Presidential Administration to your local City Hall will feel particularly constrained to follow these rules.

For instance, the Center for Constitutional Rights is demanding access to their clients in GTMO, per the Rasul decision. Let's see if the Administration really has as much contempt for the rule of law as we all believe they do.

Come on, we dare you to refuse them the ability to confer with their lawyers, or hold open hearings for them with appropriate legal counsel. Just how far are you guys going to go in proving that you have nothing but hatred for our country and everything it stands for.

None of us here in the Mojowire command bunker are going to hold our breaths.

HOLY ROLLERS
J. One of the great surprises for the Bush Campaign in 2000 was the failure to turn out close to 4 million Evangelical Christian Conservative voters to the polls. A failure of voter turnout and on the ground organization that almost cost Junior the Election, if the referees hadn't intervened.

So it became the raison d'etre of this White House to service that consituency and ensure that they never lost becasue of a failure for that vote to feel compelled to turn out for them.

We've documented many times in the last year or so the grotesque pandering to Christian Homophobes, Racists, 700 Club grifters and Harry Potter fearin' nutbars that receive the largesse and attention of the U.S. goverment like a mother hen nurturing her chicks.

The White House clearly believes that they own evey Christian voter in America. When former altar boy John Kerry chastises the President using a verse from the Bible, the White House and the chimps in the Right Wing Press come unglued, horrified that a Democrat evens owns a Bible, let alone has the liberl nerve to read it.

As we pimped to you a few weeks ago, the President actually tried to lean on a sickly Pope to order his American Bishops to perform an exorcism on John Kerry to try to capture those Catholics that the Republicans can't seem to move over to their column.

So with all the love and tender care the White House has tried to offer, this story should come as no surprise: President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy members about holding voter registration drives.

So let me get this straight. The Bush campaign wants churches to give them a list of their members so they can openly pro-patria get out the vote and registration drives. In fact, they want to transform a place of worship into another outpost of the Bush campaign.

Well, if this isn't Ralph Reed's skankiest, musk-bathing hoochie Church Lady in Leather garters and latex hood wet-dream just come to life, then I don't know what is. The White House openly stepping up and ordering all good Christian Churches in America to organize and campaign for the President.

S. Our first thought was, kiss your tax exempt status goodbye. Churches that enjoy tax exempt status are forbidden by law from directly endorsing a candidate, contributing to that candidate, or campaigning for that canddiate in the Church's name.

So what did the letter say explictiely...feel the burn on the way down folks as we relate some of our favorites to you:

Send your Church's Directory to your States Bush/Cheney HQ. Presumably without your church's knowledge. I'm sure your fellow Church Members will be thrilled you gave away thier private information to a political party.

Shh..don't tell the Pastor..wink wink..nudge nudge.

Identify another conservative Church in your area. That shoud be easy..Just find a group of white bigots ranting about gays and immigrants, the smell alone should be easy to pick out.
Talk to your pastor about setting up a Citizenship Sunday and voter registration drive.

Here is the money shot. Talk to your pastor suggests you haven't been working your pastor to do all he can to get his congregation to the polls and pull a lever for B.C. This is the part that could get the Church a visit to a Tax Court hearing.

Recruit 5 members to the cause. Do they need to be sober when you do this? It might help if they are not.

Beyond the contempt for the separation of Church And State, this letter is yet another perfect illustration of the contempt for the rule of law this Administration has. Their attitude is, you want us to follow the law, make us. We control the Congress and the Executive Branch, and we have 5 mostly freindly justices on the Surpreme.

You want us to stop torturing people. Make us. You want us to abide by the due process rights at the heart of American Liberty, make us sissy. You want to stop us from assimilating Conservatve Christain churchs as outposts of the Republican party, make us liberal girly man.

The law is a just another tool of power, not a code of conduct to these people. And for that fact, so is the Bible. Look, we're not bagging on Christians per se, we know your scared, there's a lot of scary stuff going on out there. We got no problem with you Atticus.

The problem is with people in power who use the Bibile as a kind of social sheep shearing device to fleece people out of their money, then to retain a hold on abusive power that would have sent Jesus into a towering God-based rage that would have had all the money changers scurrying for cover.

So it's time Mr and Mrs. Evenagelical Christian. All the Yellow ribbons in the world won't matter if you allow yourself to become another loyal party member in the glorious worldwide revolution of NeoImperialism. What would Jesus Do?

cue JAMES music
And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

LEGISLATION OF THE DAMNED
S9. Salutations from low earth orbit, once again, space adventurers. After last week's dose of depression about Peak Oil, we here on S9 Station thought it would be a good idea to lighten up everyone's spirits with a digression about whatever happened to the ''PATRIOT II'' draft.

Regular followers of our antics will recall back to January of last year, after the initial flurry of criticism about the original USA PATRIOT Act died down, we told you about how the Center For Public Integrity published a leaked Justice Department draft of a followup bill that quickly came to be known as PATRIOT II. It was a horror of a bill, with several frightening provisions in it -- for example, it would have expanded the penalties for collaboration with terrorist groups to include expatriation.

Brief aside: forced expatriation is what makes American citizens into stateless persons; and, the phrase ''stateless person'' is another way of saying ''you look purty in that hood with those electrodes clamped onto yer family treasures.''

There was a great hew and cry in the mainstream media after the news about the PATRIOT II draft broke, and the Justice Department quickly made a big scene out of publicly disavowing it, saying it was all just wishful thinking on the part of some overworked prosecutors. At the same time, some reporters were saying that Justice was caught flat-footed by the leak, and now they would have to sneak the provisions of the bill through Congress in little pieces, one at a time.

Welcome to the future, boys and girls. There are now at least five bills now before Congress containing provisions that originated in the PATRIOT II draft. That's not including the one that already passed— a rider to the Intelligence Authorization Act in December— it greatly expanded the power of federal investigators to search and seize business records without a warrant. The others are as follows:

+ HR 3179, The Anti-terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act
+ HR 3037, The Anti-terrorism Intelligence Tools Enhancement Act
+ S 1606 and HR 3040, The Pretrial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act
+ HR 2934, The Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act

The first one specifies one to five years of jail time for people who disclose that federal investigators have invoked PATRIOT to search or seize their business records. The second one is a nasty piece of work that basically gives the the FBI power to issue administrative subpoenas to summon witnesses, search and seize papers and records, compel testimony, and all without requiring a court to be involved -- unless, of course, a ''contempt of court'' charge needs to be
made, naturally. The third and fourth are the House and Senate versions of the same bill -- to deny bail for those accused of terrorism, even in cases of non-violent crime. The fifth expands the federal death penalty to include minor non-violent crimes ''related'' to a terrorist act that results in death (even accidental or unintended death).

Keep in mind that all these bills and the USA PATRIOT Act itself define terrorism broadly enough to include civil disobedience and public demonstration under many circumstances. So let's review the bidding, shall we?

Suppose you're planning to go to New York City in September -- see the sights, take in a show, march in a parade and call for the impeachment of the President and his entire national security staff during the Republican National Convention -- you know, what any patriotic American would do.

Under the PATRIOT Act, these protests qualify as terrorism. Under these new laws the Congress is about to pass, organizers (even participants) could be denied bail, their homes searched, their
business records seized, their families and friends summoned and compelled to testify, in secret and under penalty of jail if they disclose it -- and all on the say of an FBI agent.

Now, suppose the New York cops and the marshalls and the national guard and the army and the secret service decide to make an example out of some of the demonstrators, the gloves come off outside Lincoln Center, and some of our peoples get trampled or run-over or beaten to death or
shot in the head or set on fire. You know, the sort of thing that happens to dirty, harry hippies who should know better, and stay in California where they belong -- well then, that means everybody charged with a crime related to the protests could be charged with a federal death penalty.

And if that doesn't give you the chills, consider the fact that DeForest B. Soaries, a senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ and the chairman of the U.S. Election
Assistance Commission, last week asked the the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish guidelines for canceling or postponing elections in the event of terrorist attacks.

He says he's still waiting for a response. Be seeing you...

BOOKS ER FER SISSIES
J. During the 2000 campaign, George Bush campaigned as Republican Governor who has presided over a vast improvement in Texas Public schools. He promised to bring that expertise to Washington. The most heralded of these changes was something hailed as the Texas miracle.

The Texas miracle was an astonishing drop in dropout rates in the Houston School District run by Rod Paige, who, on the strength of this, was promoted to Secretary of Education. The Texas miracle, which promoted constant testing of Students and strict accountability, was one of the models for the No Child Left Behind Act, the signature Education Bill of the Bush Administration.

So lets fast forward a few years later in August 2003, when the New York Times dropped this bomb: Robert Kimball, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, sat smack in the middle of the ''Texas miracle.'' His poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman class of 1,000 that dwindled to fewer than 300 students by senior year. And yet - and this is the miracle - not one dropout to report!

Nor was zero an unusual dropout rate in this school district that both President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige have held up as the national showcase for accountability and the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law. Westside High here had 2,308 students and no reported dropouts; Wheatley High 731 students, no dropouts. A dozen of the city's poorest schools reported dropout rates under 1 percent.

....In February, with the help of Dr. Kimball, the local television station KHOU broke the news that Sharpstown High had falsified its dropout data. That led to a state audit of 16 Houston schools, which found that of 5,500 teenagers surveyed who had left school, 3,000 should have been counted as dropouts but were not. Last week, the state appointed a monitor to oversee the district's data collection and downgraded 14 audited schools to the state's lowest rating.

....''This isn't about educating children,'' Dr. Kimball said. ''It's about public relations.'' This story barely created a ripple in the national Press. Rod Paige still has his job, despite going Dick Cheney on the National Education Association when he called them Terrorists. And what of Texas, which is living the legacy of the Bush Governorship in Education. This via the Victoria Advocate in Texas:

A U.S. Census Bureau study shows that Texas again ranks last in the percentage of high school graduates. The study released Tuesday shows that 77 percent of Texans age 25 and older had a high school degree in 2003, the same percentage as a decade earlier, when Texas ranked 39th in the country. Meanwhile, graduation rates in other states have improved and a record 85 percent of Americans have high school degrees.

Get the party started Mississippi, you are no longer the undisputed champion of illiterate Red States! It will be banjo's and moonshine in Red State America now that Texas has set a new standard in defining education downwards. The perfect counterpoint to this story came through into Mojowire headquarters from the Moonie Times:

S. Texas officials say the state's 150,000-bed prison system will exceed its operating capacity next year. The overcrowding comes after nearly a decade of prison expansion in which the system's capacity tripled. The growth is attributed to more prison sentences and a growing number of parole revocations.Gov. Rick Perry is looking at leasing county jail space as a short-term solution and building more prisons in the long term, spokesman Robert Black said.

Hmmm, could there be connection between illiteracy and an expanding prison population? We are pimping this to you Wireheads because Texas is the perfect example of the Republican Nirvana that George Bush wants to mold the rest of the country into.

A low tax state with the country's lowest population with the bare minimum of a high school diploma, an absolute essential to employment. A state with one of the countries largest populations of children without Healthcare. A state that harbors companies like Enron which conspired to and did defraud the State of California through manipulation of the energy market, screw you Grandma Millie!

No Child Left Behind was hailed as a new era of Federal Support for public education. So what does the Administration do? It refuses to fully fund the initiative by close to 30 million a year! No Child will be left behind in a our national push to decrease the number of high school graduates.

The conclusion we draw from this is that the Administration doesn't have an education policy. It cooked up a bill and then decided to leave that bill on the Island of Misfit Unfunded mandates. Nothing else has been forthcoming from this Administration other than more Voucher rhetoric.

This is in sharp contrast to the Kerry campaign, which has made several concrete proposals to address real issues in American Education. Let's just stop and revel in that statement. A candidate for President who actually thinks about and proposes real domestic policy ideas? It's been so long since that happened we almost forgot what it was like. What are some of the Kerry Idea's..Here's a few we like:

School Construction: It's been estimated that there is over 120 Billion in school repair and construction that needs to done to adequately house and teach the rising school age population. Kerry has proposed issuing 24.8 Billion in Bonds to help states and counties fund new school construction.

This is a tremendous idea for a desperate need. Many communities have no realistic ability to raise the necessary funds to build enough class space to educate their kids. It's appalling that the Republican Party will dig through the pockets of working people to pay for prisons to house the local pothead for a lifetime, but ooze blood out their eye sockets at the idea of taxing millionaires so your kids can learn to read. Welcome to Texas..

You get what you pay for: There's been a lot of lip-flapping by the Republican party about blaming everything wrong with their ignorant children on teachers. John Kerry wants them to put up or shut up. You really want better teachers.

Then let's pay them more. He has proposed assisting school districts in raising the pay of teachers to attract the best and the brightest to the teaching profession, in exchange for relaxed rules on teacher accountability. His proposal particularly is focused on Math and the Sciences, where competition with the private sector is greatest.

Folks, this is a no-brainer. You want to keep those tech jobs and be the innovation capital of the world, then we need the workers to do it. Unless you want to live in the WalMart Nirvana advocated by the Republican party.

This is just a taste of Kerry's ideas. He's stumping on expanding access to College with financial assistance, recruiting and training principals, even helpings schools meet the needs of kids with behavior and discipline problems. Yeah, an administration unwilling to flush anyone with a whiff of problems down the toilet.

Can we make it any plainer. Texas is the Education reality that the President wants to bring to a school near you. John Kerry wants to actually start a policy debate on making our schools better, and spending the money we need to that, rather than dropping a few billion on the top 1% so they can ship your job overseas.

An illiterate America is a Republican America. An ideas so simple even a Texas Republican with no diploma drinking moonshine at a gun show could understand...talk to the latte scrubs...

J. It's 123 days until election day and our patriotic thought for the week is: readin' and writin' and 'rtihmatic, means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft says... “Get out there and win one for W, or I might just remember your church once hosted an Iraqi exchange student”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...

Mojowire for 06.26; vol. 2, no. 11

J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 2, No.11... I'm Mojo...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, June 26, 2004, Day 1,177 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, there is a new sherrif, or God-head, in town, and you have met his deputies in every airport you have ever been in. They are dressed in bad mu-mus and asking you for money for their pure-light of Christlove, the Rev. Moon of the Unification Church. Next time you see one of those moonies, look closely, it might be your Congressman.

J. Next, how weird is it that the President of the United States goes to Rome in an attempt to enlist the help of a cranky old cold-war Pope, nearly demanding that the Pontiff issue some sort of writ or commandmant or whatever you fellas in the funny hats do and order all those hippy American Bishops to get with the program and W. re-elected... stay tuned and find out how weird.

S. Then Strychnine rains down cauldrons of burning petroleum product upon our heads this week from on orbit, explaining how we have probably not seen the worst of the oil-price crisis and exactly who is to blame for this lovely condition... you'll be amazed at the culprits.

J. Finally this morning, it is quickly becoming the Night of the Long Knives for the Bush Administration, as Americans of all stations are becoming disenchanted and have figured out that there is something they can do about it.

…So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing...

HOUSE OF THE RISING MOON
J. John Gorenfeld who writes for Gadflyer Magazine Online has a question: Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah – with royal robes, a crown, the works?

Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building? Umm, I don't know about the rest of America, but I just about horked up a lung. Congrss crowned the new Messiah? Funny, I don't recall that showing up in my morning newspaper? Does this happen often in Washington?..

Mr. Gorenfeld lays it out for us:

The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment on April 4, a quote from the keynote speech was in the Web version of its "Reliable Sources" column. The speaker: Sun Myung Moon, 84, an ex-convict whose political activities were at the center of the 1976-8 Koreagate influence-peddling probe. That's when an investigation by Congress warned that Moon, after having befriended Richard Nixon in his darkest hour, was surrounding himself with other politicians to overcome his reputation: as the leader of the cult-like Unification Church, which recruited unwary college students, filled Madison Square Garden with couples in white robes, wed them in bulk and demanded obedience.

That was before he launched the Washington Times – "in response to Heaven’s direction," as he would later say – and a 20-year quest to make his enemies bow to him.

He has also claimed, in newspaper ads taken out by the Unification Church, that Jesus, Confucius, and the Buddha have endorsed him. Muhammad, according to the 2002 ad, led the council in three cries of "mansei," or victory. And every dead U.S. president was there, too – because Moon's gospel is inseparable from visions of true-blue American power.

Ohhh..thaaat Reverand Moon. I'm still reeling from the notion that dude had a vision where all the dead american presidents shoe iron for dealing out the wretched stuff that brought that horrible vision in front of his retina's.

This isn't a joke folks. The Revereand Moon, who sees visions of the Buddha and Christ along with the spooks of G Washington and Grover Clevleand, was crowned the Messiah on Federal property. Someone better strap down the Lincoln statue on the Mall, Honest ABe might get so cranked up in the afterlife about this we might have the reanimiated statue of the great emancipator asking some hard questins over at the rayburn building.

So, now that we've introduced our contestant, let's start our show...Mr Gorenfeld...what you got for us: First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense.

Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball.

Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife.

S. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.

But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation."

Wow, for once something bizarre and disturbing happend and the Bush Adminisation wasn't involved. Well no, but what is involved is Washingtons premier conservative Newspaper, the Washington Times, owned lock, stock and libelous barrel by the Reverand Moon.

The Washington Times makes the Orange County Register look like a mimeographed copy of Worker's World Daily, and has a commitment to the truth akin to a bad hair day in Nazi Germany. The Reverand Moon, — or Mr. Messiah to you, hippie — is dedicated to many of the same goals as Right Wing Crank Nation, including depriving Gays of their basic human rights, and is Mr. Gorenfeld reminds us the Reverend wants " U.S. Constitution to be replaced by religious government that he calls "Godism," calling the church-state separation the work of Satan. "The church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel," he said in the same sermon."

Yeah, homophobe, a psycho who thinks he's the Messiah, a wealthy contributor to Republicna campaigns, and the Publisher of Right wing propaganda. Ohh.. and he runs a bizzare cult that proclaims him the Messiah. And he's a key sponsor of the Republican Party.

The moral of this disturbing, wretched story is that behind of the façade of white bread, middle American Christianity, is in part a bizzare billionaire cult leader who controls a powerful media outlet and can recruit Congressman to participate in bizarre ceremonies where he declares himself the messiah.

And at the end of the day, when the Moon-ssiah calls, they not only come a runnin', but they offer him crash space at their crib and a few minutes of "special time" with the old lady, as long as he remembers their names when the fund raising letter arrives.

So the next time you are arguing over the water cooler with the office conservative about those damn deviant Hollywood liberals, Bust this little story out...Let's see how John Q. conservative feels about the Reverand Moon and the hand he has up the butt of the Republican Party..

TICKING CLOCKS
J. Back in the dark days of the Nixon Administration, as the clock began to toll for the President and impeachment loomed, it's been said that President Nixon began talking to several of the portraits in the West Wing. It's altogether unclear what was said exactly, but considering Nixon's
considerable Paranoia and the depressing realization that he was likely to be the first President removed from office, it's not surprising that former Presidents began to speak to him, or that he was talking back.

So as we piece together some recent stories regarding the Bush Administration that sound a bit bizarre, even for them, we need to consider them in the large context of the grim realization that the Maximum Commander in Chief is not going to ride into the sweet and easy victory foretold by
the mighty Wizards Rove and Mehlman.

First, lets deal with some of the more empirical issues. This from Ruy Texiarea at "The Emerging Democratic Majority:

''Voters still favor Kerry over Bush (53-40) on which candidate can better handle the economy. That Kerry advantage is essentially unchanged since early May.

On the situation in Iraq, Kerry and Bush are nearly tied (47-46 in Bush's favor), a slightly improvement for Kerry over his 3 point deficit in early May. This tie is notable, of course, because sentiment is now so strikingly negative about the Iraq war. Perhaps Kerry's failure to gain an advantage reflects the public's view, captured in other polls, that Kerry does not have a clear plan himself for dealing with the Iraq situation.

Another interesting finding is that, while Bush has a modest lead (51-43) over Kerry in terms of who the public trusts more to handle the responsibilities of commander-in-chief, the public expresses an identical degree of confidence in the ability of Bush and Kerry to handle the responsibilities of commander-in-chief (61 percent in each case).

In terms of favorability ratings, it seems significant that Kerry's net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) is now substantially higher than Bush's. Kerry is +23 on this measure (58 percent favorable/35 percent unfavorable), up from +17 in Gallup's last measurement in April. In
contrast, Bush is just +8 (53/45), down from +14 in April. These data are consistent with the recent New York Times story that suggested the GOP's frontal assault on Kerry has not had much success creating an unfavorable image of him.

So despite the the 80 million in deceitful attack ads dumped on the Battleground states by Rove Sideous, John Kerry's poll numbers are gradually getting better, and the Presidents numbers are tanking. This comes as no shock to the the Imperial Reelection Committee.

And by the way, pay no mind to that utter load of crap that Fox News produced a few days ago that show improvement across the board in Bush's numbers compared to the Gallup Poll. Nothing that emerges from the mouths of the reality technicians at Fox news is worth believing. Memo to Fox, having Hannity ask around the Newsroom is not a scientific poll, no matter what Darth Ailes and his Sith Master Murdoch put in the company newsletter.

Even the jaded Political staff here at the wire has difficulty grokking the idea that the Bush geeks dropped 80 million to produce these awful numbers. And no doubt this is not lost on G2 and his VP, Mr. Big Time. In fact a pair of interesting events shaped up in the past few weeks that point to a White House that is, perhaps, staring at those portraits wondering if they might have a few worthwhile thoughts to share.

One that struck us here at the Wire occurred when the President went to Rome to drop a Medal of Freedom on the Pope. Now this sounds like big deal, but lets remember that Doris Day and Charlton Heston have one of these things. This visit to the Vatican City came about shortly after a few Catholic Bishops announced that they would refuse communion to John Kerry, A Catholic, because of his stance on the issue of a woman's right to choose. How they reconcile with the Presidents thirst for execution is a mystery to the Catholic mafia here at the Wire.

Now, Bishops have considerable latitude within their diocese, and most Bishops were at best cool to the idea of starting a political brawl over Abortion in the middle of the an election cycle. Not to mention that the Catholic laity displayed little enthusiasm for the idea. However, that failed to deter our resolute decision maker in chief, who reportedly told the Pope he wanted to advance the Pope's social agenda, but "not all the bishops are with me."

S. When we first read this story, a few of our editors had to be sedated and sharp objects removed from the Mojowre command center. Did the President just wink nudge the Pope into leaning on his Bishops to crack down on Pro Choice Catholics. Now, right wing cranks in the Catholic Church and the Evangelical movement have been agitating for a good old fashioned Church beatdown for decades over Abortion.

But the President, in so many words, asked the Pope to help him get reelected by using the sacrament of communion to lean on John kerry and get him in trouble with the Catholic vote. A vote Republicans have worked overtime to secure and cannot quite get the same kind of support they get from the Evangelical Protestants.

So tell us Mr. President, what exactly should the Pope do to get the Bishops to "be with you"? It sounds to us that the President wants to bring back the good old days when Popes put whole nations under interdiction for pissing him off, cutting them off from the Sacraments, or excommunicated rebellious politicians who didn't toe the lie. Is the President that worried about his reelection and John Kerry that he has the elephant balls to ask the Pope to put an ex-cathedra whammy on the Democrats?

You bet the did. The devious little weasel would burn every Tree on the White House grounds if he thought the Dark Lord Sauron would bring him the orc vote. It's an no brainer for the scum at the West Wing to try to work the sickly Pope into influencing the election. Nevertheless, the American Bishops have basically pushed this whole issue beyond the election cycle before they weigh in on it. Sucks to be you W.

The Next event occurred just a few days ago on the Senate Floor. As the Senate gathered to take some pictures together, Senator Pah Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Justice Committee, came over to say hello to VP Dick Big Time Cheney.

Dick, according to witnesses, recoiled and informed Senator Leahy that he was less than pleased over his and other dems comments and criticisms about him and Halliburton. Senator Leahy told the VP he wasn't fond of the Schmucks in the Religious Right calling him and other Catholic Democrats bad Catholics, and trying to snitch to the Pope about it.

That’s when Dick promptly dropped the F bomb on the Senator, suggesting that he pleasure himself anally while it was " still legal". What the...? While it's still legal...? Is the VP so cranked up these days that a simple Hello from the other side of the aisle drives him into a rage where he drops the F bomb and then utters weird crap like that?

And while we're chatting about the VP, why is he, days after the 9/11 commission broke the bad news to the rest of the suckers that the Al Queda/Sadam connection was a load of donkey crap, pimping this lie to everyone still? He tells Gloria Borger on mace the Nation he never said it
was confirmed, and then the Daily show runs the clip where he does say on National Television. Did the VP forget we invented Videotape? Surprise Dick!

As the Plame investigators bad cop good cop the VP and President, and the torture memos expose the Administration for the Emperor Ming wannabes they are, we should expect more and more little episodes of the President and the Vice President acting out like disturbed teenagers. Particularly if their poll numbers continue to drop...

I wonder what the Nixon portrait will say in the final days...?

And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

OUR OILY WORLD
S9 Greetings fellow Earth orbit workers! And a hearty shout out as well to our comrades everywhere in the galaxy where the signal from this transmitter can be demodulated and realized as speech. Long live the first interstellar!

Before the dog days of summer arrive in the Northern Hemisphere, and the political campaigns heat up in the twin cities of Washington D.C. and Baghdad, Iraq, sucking all the oxygen out of the public discourse until well into November -- we here on the S9 Station command and control
deck would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the Terran energy economy to our ground station logistics team.

The fact is -- your planet is running out of cheap oil. Up here in low earth orbit, we don't have any oil we didn't make ourselves -- so we know how expensive life without cheap oil is going to be for you. But a lot of your friends and neighbors down there at the bottom of the gravity well are colossally clueless about the issue. You need to help educate them.

It doesn't help that environmental activists have been bleating for the last thirty years that the Earth is ''running out of petroleum'' while everyone around them keeps burning more and more fossil fuels and there hasn't really been a serious and prolonged shortage on the world oil and gas markets since the OPEC interventions of the 1970's. The reason it doesn't help is that you're not running out of oil -- you're running out of cheap oil.

Think about what goes into the price of a gallon of gasoline. If you're an American, the first things that probably come to mind are taxes -- but Americans have an extremely low rate of taxation on energy consumption. No, the real issue you need to get your head around is production costs.

Allow me to introduce you to your friend and mine: the Energy Profit Ratio (EPR). The EPR is the ratio of how much energy you can produce in relation to how much energy you have to consume to produce it. To make a gallon of gasoline, you have to burn some gasoline producing it.

You have to locate the oil fields, drill the wells, heat the oil in the ground so you can pump it, then you have to pump it out of the ground, pump it through a pipeline (that you probably have to burn a
lot of gasoline driving around in armored columns trying to protect, but that's another story), ship it across the ocean on a steamship, heat it up some more in order to refine it, and push it around on trucks to filling stations. And that's far from a complete list of things you have to do.

Still, after burning all that gasoline making more gasoline, the EPR of petroleum fuel is high enough that you can get as much as a hundred gallons in return for every gallon you burn producing them. That's an EPR of 100 to 1.

The problem -- as I said before -- is that the planet is running out of cheap oil. By that, I mean the ratio is dropping. All the easy oil fields have been pumped out in North America. Production rates are already declining everywhere in the world except the Middle East. It costs more and more to find and develop new oil fields. The rate of discovery for new proven oil reserves is plummeting like a stone. The oil we do find is harder and harder to recover, costing more in fuel to make the fuel needed to recover more fuel. Demand continues to soar as new industrial development, particularly in Asia, comes online.

But that's not the bad news. The bad news is that the EPR for every alternative fuel source you can think of (and is even remotely practical) is much, much lower than the EPR of oil and natural gas. The next best alternative is coal, which is only about a third as efficient as fossil crude -- and that's before you do any of the magick to mitigate against the release of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geotherm, soy-diesel, all the earthy-crunchy eco-geek favorites have way lower EPR numbers than even coal. Some of them -- like solar, for example -- still have negative EPR numbers. That means it costs more energy to make and install a solar panel than you will ever get out of using it over its entire natural lifetime.

Most of the developed world's energy economy is dependent on the EPR of oil and natural gas. When that number falls -- as it has been for a couple years now, and will continue to do from now until forever -- the price of energy in dollars will go up dramatically. If you thought $2.00 per gallon for unleaded was a raw deal, wait until it costs you a whole paycheck just to fill up the tank in a Toyota Prius. Think it won't be so bad? You haven't done the math.

If you want to know what's giving Dick Cheney nightmares these days: it's this. He knows all about Energy Price Ratios, and what life will be like in America when all the recoverable oil in the world is under the ground in places like Baghdad. And he also knows -- by the time all the oil in the world is either gone up the smokestack or not worth the cost of pumping it out of the ground -- that he'll be dead from old age. It'll be your world to fix. Not his.

The good news: the peak of cheap oil production will prevent the worst doomsday scenarios of global warming from coming to pass; the information: windmills and solar panels cannot run all your bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, cement factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc.,

and still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, and a steady flow of summer blockbuster movies.

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
J. While you are sitting there despairing over the fact that we are trying our level best to turn Iraq into another Vietnam, complete with corrupt proxy government uniformly despised by its people, a sputtering economy and environmental policy written by Christian doomsday cultists and stripminers, take heart... there are things moving right now and it is not as dark out here as some would have us believe.

For instance, it was a no-brainer seeing yet another Michael Moore anti-Bush polemic coming, but what has been surprising has been the general public reaction to the movie. And sure, we all expected some folks from Planet Show Biz to get their grills on the tube running down the current administration... yeah, Babs, I'm talking to you...but some are going right over the top with a political counterstrike planned for September.

And finally, Dollar Bill Grieder, writes in the Nation this week about a Fifth Column movement from within the Beltway by folks who reject the criminal stoopidty of the Bush Administration and want to see them and all their devices run into the Potomac.

To begin with, Farenheit 9/11 might well be Michael Moore's best film yet, and still it is probably pretty predictable for anyone who has seen Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine or any of his TV Nation or The Awful Truth shows. Moore does the two things he does best, find great B-roll of people speaking when they didn't think anyone was listening and then asking really uncomfortable questions of people in authority.

The surprising part about this film has been the public's reaction to it. For instance, here in Irvine, of all places, if you don't already have a ticket to see it, then you probably won't get to see it this weekend, and it's being shown on two screens here at the University Theater. Apparently, this is a scene that is playing out across the nation at the 1,000 or so theaters that are carrying "Farenheit." By the way, that's twice as many theaters as originally planned.

The Right's non-stop, purple-faced, bloviating against the movie, which has been broadcast 24/7 for the past two weeks on every cable news outlet and in every newspaper in the Western World has had roughly the same effect of Wile E. Coyote's Road-Runner-Explode-O-Matic-Deluxe, manufactured by the good people at Acme products.

Guys like Bush Campaign chair Ken Mehlman and Dan Bartlett are now walking around town looking like a cartoon bomb has just gone and plastered their domes with black smudge and blown all their hair off...

You know, the Left managed to get it right about Mel Gibson's the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. We made our criticisms heard, and then we just *left*it*alone*. But not the Right, ohhh nooo... that would have been too easy. And now they are poised to make Michael Moore the single most successful documentarian in the history of film. You guyz rock!

Yeah, you think a seasoned old Washington insider Dick Cheney isn't feeling the branch creak a bit right now, when he's careening around D.C. dropping f-bombs in public like Chris Rock in an HBO special?

Then there is this plan in the works to stage a massive "Concert for Change" in Giant Stadium on Sept. 1, the same date and rougly the same time that GOP is coronating W for another tour of America's golf courses at taxpayer expense. And the kicker is this, the headliner for this show might well be none other than Bruce Springsteen.

Just think about that one for a moment, at the time W. is being crowned king of the Jelly Bean people, The Boss will be just across the Hudson calling out his gang of feckless thugs and exhorting people to run them into the sea.

The promoter of the show, which will apparently happen with or without Springsteen, has set up a site: www.draftbruce.com/ to get people to sign a petition asking Springsteen to perform. Given the fact that Springsteen has lent his voice to the progressive public arena, this is not so far-fetched. Springsteen has gone so far as to publish Al Gore's NYU speech on his own website, saying: "A few weeks ago at N.Y.U. Al Gore gave one of the most important speeches I've heard in a long time. The issues it raises need to be considered by every American concerned with the direction our country is headed in."

Momentarily leaving aside the question of where the hell that version of Al Gore was four years ago, I am also reminded of Springsteen's rap in the video for his remake of Edwin Starr's anthemic 70s hit "War" when he said, "It's 1984, and in 1984, blind obedience to a President, to a government or anything will get you killed."

That's a guy I would like to see on the left bank of the Hudson carrying the banner for the working people whom the Bush Administration has declared war on in this country at the very moment the GOP is cooking up their "final solution."

S. But beyond filmmakers and rock stars, there is another dynamic to this situation. Dollar Bill Greider points to a growing inside the Beltway insurgency against the crimes of the Bush Administration, from torturing detainees, to lying to Congress about Medicare, to the terrorist background of our handpicked Iraqi King.

Sure, as Greider points out, leaks are a form of legal currency in Washington. As an insider you can eat and drink for weeks on end on a good leak, but there's something more to this current level of pourousness. We'll let Dollar Bill speak for himself for a moment:

"We don't need to know the identities to grasp that these and other over-the-transom "communications" provided forceful and well-timed contradictions to the White House line. It is also obvious that these leaks could not have come from the lower depths of the bureaucracy. The material is too sensitive for wide distribution. Not to take anything away from aggressive reporters, but the leakers clearly targeted the Post, Times and Journal to achieve maximum impact on Washington. The messages are not from some office crank at the Xerox machine but had to originate among sophisticated and highly placed officers of government.

My own surmise-corroborated in conversations with several long-experienced Washington reporters-is that we are probably talking about career military officers and senior civil servants at the Pentagon, Justice Department lawyers and professionals at the CIA or State Department. In practice, sensitive documents are sometimes passed off laterally to former colleagues no longer in government who provide them to the chosen reporters. Some risk to one's career is required, but these are smart people who know how to cover their tracks."

Why are these people coming out of the woodwork now? Perhaps some are shamed for not standing up for what they knew was right the first time, before the war. Perhaps some were geuinely duped and are now mad as hell about it; a whole city full of Daniel Elsbergs with white-hot peppers of rage lodged in their ... well, places where white-hot peppers of rage should probably not go if you are a sitting President with poll numbers starting to fall into the 40s...

These are the signs and portents that remind me of Bobby Kennedy when he once described political activism to a pebble being dropped into still water. Small ripples proceed from the center where the stone was dropped. And if enough pebbles are dropped into the water, they build and build until they create giant waves...okay, so the actual wave-physics of the simle don't really work, but you get the picture.

And a quick aside to JK, look dude, don't think for a moment that we won't turn around and cack you like a sick cat if we get you elected and you turn into some watered down version of W with an IQ above 90. Get used to life in a petrie dish Sen. Kerry, we aren't going anywhere.

But the good news this morning is that there really is a legitimate hint of change on the wind. So this is the time to keep pushing, keep the heat on, keep blogging, writing, speaking, shouting. You are not alone.

It's time -- it's on!

J. It's 130 days until election day and our patriotic thought for the week is: Alternative fuels research and development, means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft says... “Hey, why're all them Bishop-fellas wearin' dresses like a bunch of sissies...”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...

Mojowire for 06.11; vol. 2, no. 10

J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 2, No.10... I'm Mojo...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, June 11, 2004, Day 1,163 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, we take a cranky look at the beatification of St. Ron. Crude cargo cult behavior has suddenly sprung up with people wanting to rename buildings, put him on money, carve him into Mt. Rushmore, snag a fingerbone for the familiy reliquary... never fear, the Wire goes straight to the French philosopher card for our take, stay tuned.

J. Next, we look at extactly why we should be counting our blessings federal bench nominees get beat down like punks by Democrats when Maximum W names taps these choads to interpret our laws. Just look at the memos being pumped out by this gang of Dr. Strangelaws from Justice, contorting the law to make it safe for the Prez order people to be tortured to death.

S. Then Strychnine is on hiatus this morning, shoveling coal into the station steam furnaces to move to a higher, more stable orbit. In place of his regular horror this moring, we will have a screed demonstrating why next year, we will be going to Texas to cheer them on when they have their secession day rally. "Texas, it's like a whole other planet!"

J. Finally this morning, we break down the Kerry health plan and discuss a big reason why we all need to step away from the glowing visions of St. Ron and think about some bigger issues for a few minutes, because, trust us, the current hive brain trying to run the country isn't expending a micro-erg of energy on planning for your well being.

…So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing...

THE PASSION OF THE RON
J. I served in Ronald Reagan's military, lived through his recession, gritted my teeth at his administration, so in his passing, let me hearken back to the immortal words of Voltaire who said "To the living one owes respect, to the dead, one owes only truth" and in that vein let me say: His body should have been dumped in the trunk of a 1971, mold-green Chevy Nova, driven out to the desert, rolled into a dry arroyo and forgotten.

Okay, then... Now that I got that off my chest, let's talk a little bit about the beatification of St. Ron. By the way, does anyone actually know where I can get a finger bone? I am a little down on my luck and that's supposed to be some powerful ugly mojo there. Especially if I can get the one he's wagging when he's telling Soviet Premiere Gorbachev to invade East Germany with construction workers to tear down an international border, I'll bet that thing can shoot lightning or ice rays or something... that would rule!

Okay, then... Now I feel better. Well, no ... not really, but that will have to do. Mike's lookin' a little nervous. Sorry, perhaps that was just a reaction to the whole mythologizing of St. Gipper's time that has caused a psychological backlash for me.

Look, we think its fine to honor the passing of a President of the United States. Our main beef, as you may have already surmized, oh wise Wireheads, is with the concept of myth creation, so let's get this right out here in the open; Reagan was a bad actor, a lousy President, and a half bright racist who surrounded himself with pimps and thugs and ran the White House like a cross between a Spy vs. Spy cartoon and corporate brothel.

Personally, we have no problem with all the ceremony surrounding the President's passing and the rememberances and all the rest of it. But why can't they just leave it at that; the guy was President, he did some stuff, some of it good (although, honestly I'm blanking on the whole good part at the moment, but I sure there must have been something), and then just leave it be.

Why the mythology creation? Well, stand by boys and girls, because that's not a rhetorical question, there is a right and wrong answer there. Hearken back to our rants last week about the creation of mythology surrounding veterans... what was the theme there? Anyone? Anyone? It was about misappropriating someone else's life for your own personal political gain.

How soon before we start seeing tabloid papers with headlines that read "Ronald Reagan appears before group of frightened farmers in Iowa, bids them "fear not," burns his image into the side of prize heiffers."

How long before we start seeing billboards asking "What Would Reagan Do?" Of course, anyone who was paying attention during the 80s knows what Reagan would have done, farmed the thing out to political Luca Brazzi Lee Atwater and his Attorney General Ed Meese, who would have then proceeded to violate as many laws as possible while The Gipper took yet another nap in the oval office.

So let's not forget one crucial thing here. No matter what you see, read, or hear regarding The Gipper right now from the White House or the Republican spin machine and their minions at FOX News and elsewhere, it is all about one thing, the perpetuation of the current political power structure through the use of myth and revisionist history.

These people could not care less about Reagan or the reality of his Presidency; it is all about getting over on you the American voter, and if we have to pack you in fuzzy sweet marzipan, with lilting violins and soft focus photos of a noble looking man on horse back, or standing in front a vast American flag, his hair slicked back in a freshening breeze, eyes gazing off into a bright future, a forehead proudly jutting to proclaim the supremacy of the American ideal, all to the point we become drooling idiots barely able to contain our crazed idolotry, then that's the way it's going to be!

And if you have any doubts about that little parable, just trot yourself over to the Bush relelection website, www.GeorgeWBush.com and check out their front page. It is a 900 foot Ronald Reagan; a tawdry political exercise in cheap hackery, thinly disguised as an homage to a distinguished American.

As Maximum Leader eulogized Friday: "And he believed in taking a break now and then, because, as he said, there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse." ... Yeah... Best not to think too much about that.

S. I remember many years ago, when mojo, Strychnine and I went to the Republican National Convention in San Diego, where mojo was actually working as a reporter at that time. Mrs. Gipper gave this sachrine heart string tugger of a performance on the dais like some weird piece of performance art, that was designed to soften up the crowd for the harsh reality of Bob Dole.

I remember us sitting down in a bar, and strychnine recording the words of mojo when he wrote:

"During the tribute to Ronald Reagan, while his wife Nancy was glitching on the dais, I was in the Vision 96 Tactical Command Center watching it through a stereogram of CNN and C-SPAN. I remember Mojo saying, "I hope his senility is a waking nightmare of broken and maimed Nicaraguan children, dead and dying AIDS patients, and the innocent civilians terrorized with the arms sold to Iran. I hope the rest of his unnatural life is one unbroken string of horrifying hallucinations that haunt the empty rooms of what remains of his mind."

Harsh words indeed, and Strychnine was correct in pointing out that this mentality was not one good people could sustain for long. It had been a tough few days for Mojo and Strychnine up that point.

We are having the same reaction right now, and if the rhetoric is a little harsh, then that is the reason. We are rebelling against the beatification of the guy who ran up the national debt to unprecedented amounts, while engaging in massive tax increases, mostly on the poorest Americans, while stripping those same poor of much of their social safety net, who wanted to institute a theocracy and damn near started a nuclear war.

You want more? This is the guy who swore there would be no swap of arms for hostages, then doing just that, instructing his people to circumvent U.S. law to aid terrorists in Central America, arming and training the same middle eastern terrorists who later went on to form the organization that flew jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

And well do we remember the slogans, "The Pride is Back!", "It's Morning Again in America..." Sure, as long as you were upper-middle class white folks. Hey, it was great to feel good about being American. That was all good. It would have been nice if the President and his flying chimp brigade in his West Wing would have respected that enough to do what was right instead of what was ideologically popular.

Reagan presided over a time when cynicism replaced intellect, cruelty replaced cool and money was mistaken for spirituality.

And now there is talk of renaming buildings, carving him on Mount Rushmore, and one local half-bright Congressman wants to restart the U.S. Civil War and replace Andy Jackson's grill on the 10 dollar bill with Reagan's.

Look, enough is enough! The guy is gone, let the historians get on with their violent debates over his legacy and let's get on with things. But the truth and reality of what is happening is much more painful. The mythology will be so firmly enculturated, so strongly transmitted, that the truth of things will become obfuscated and downright ostracized and we will all be poorer for it.

The legacy will be a lie, and no one will dare contradict in publicly, except for a few who will be officially marginalized with rhetoric branding them "traitors" and "malcontents." No one will be able to question the official story of St. Ron, as told in the big-type book with the color illustrations suitable for the whole family, avaialble at the St. Ron's gift store for only $39.95, next to the St. Ron Concourse in the St. Ron National Shrine and Holy Burial Ground.

It is fitting, then, perhaps that Regan's ultimate legacy might well be the final triumph of political style over substance, helped by people who have neither a need nor a respect for the truth. Indeed, it has been the meta-prinicple guiding the GOP ever since 1982. And a vital piece of our history will be lost forever.

THEY PUT THE 'TORT' IN TORTURE
J. As anyone who has been following the news for the last couple of days might have come to see, there have been memos leaked from the Justice Department and the Department of Defense, dating back to 2002, describing in detail the legal arguments on why the President can order people to be beaten to death, but that if the President orders it, it can't be torture.

We intercepted the memos and asked our legal team of Hamurabi, Aquinas and Darrow, LLC to sit down and analyze the legal niceties of the Geneva Convention and U.S. Law has it applies to a President giving commands during a period of hostilities with non-state and demi-state actors.

When the laughter died down, they wrapped the memos in some raw meat and threw them into a cage where they keep the junior associate attorneys. We turned away not wanting to view the resulting spectacle of legal feeding...the sounds were enough to make us fear.

Our legal team assured us that there was one thing and only one thing that any of these memos had in common, and it was not a respect for the rule of law. These memos, without ever reading them, could be seen for what they were: get out of jail free cards for the Prez. and his gang, should, in the unlikely event of, ohhh...I don't know, video and pictures of U.S. troops torturing people to death, ever surface, the kitchen door would have to be left ajar and the engine running in the car out in the alley for Maximum Leader.

This really started when the President's most recent nominee for the bench to be on the business end of a public beating on the town square, Albert Gonzalez penned a little treatise a few years back on how the President is not really beholden to U.S. law as long as he can somehow say he was trying to save lives by torturing "bad guys."

Oh yeah... this is a guy I wanted on the federal bench interpreting U.S. law. Jeez, no wonder the Prez didn't want the ABA helping vet his judicial nominations. And suddenly, it would appear we owe Tom Daschle a little more respect for taking such a hard line on these jack-booted punks when they rolled up on the Senate.

This was followed by the Yoo memos. John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general and chief bottle washer, was asked by the DoD to let them know how far they could go in torturing people in Afghanistan before they were in danger violating the law.

Now sure, there was all sorts of talk about the 1949 Geneva Convention, Article III of the U.S. Constitution delineating Presidential war powers, The War Crimes Act enrolled as18 U.S.C §2441 and the International Law Court case of Nicaragua v. United States, 1986. But we can get right past all that straight to the heart of this thing and say that in Attorney Yoo's learned opinion, we can torture anyone we want as long as claim their Al Qaeda operatives, and as far as torturing the Taliban goes, sure it's okay, they weren't signatories to anything anyway and most of them didn't wear uniforms.

And you know, there is something that is extra-special chilling about that last part. They didn't wear uniforms of a recognized military force, so it was okay to torture them. Or to put another way, we can torture all the civilians we want, as long as we make a claim to their combatant status.

Horrible.

It was in these documents and then the later working paper by Rummy's gang of bloodless ghouls in the Pentagon that began the United States' foray into organized torture as foreign policy.

And it's really a little embarassing for mojo and I, because we went around and around with Strychnine many times on this subject. We all know torture produces lousy intelligence, and the political fall out would be catastrophic if it ever came to light...such were our arguments.

Well, strychnine, please feel free to help yourself to a big steaming cup of "I Told You So" on us.

S. You really have to get into the 6 March, 2003, memo to see how queer this legal argument becomes to allow torture. For instance, the 1994 Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. is a signatory, although with "reservations" states specifically that torture is a specific intent crime.

That is to say that there must be what lawyers call Mens Rea, or criminal intent along with the act. The actions had to be intended to cause severe physicalor mental pain.

The convention also says that all the signatory parties must take care to exercise prohibitis against torture within their terrirtory under their jurisdiction.

Well, you see where these arguements are going, even if they are such bald faced lies that not even the Chewbacca defense could save them in court. We didn't really *mean* to torture any of these guys, we were just havin' a little fun and things got kinda outta hand.

I mean this is the same kind of arguements these guys used to beat rape and battery charges when they were frat boys in college...just a little harmless fun gone too far. But even if that's not the case, they were okay because none of this happened in the direct terrirtorial control of the United States. Again, this is a bald faced lie because of the Gitmo tortures, but they will claim that's a special extra-dimensional worm-hole jurisidiction and they cannot be prosecuted for that.

And even if all of the above were considered and they were still going to do serious time for crimes against humanity, well, there's always the lawless state, coup d'tat card.

To wit:

"The Department of Justice has concluded that customary international law cannot bind the Executive Branch under the Consitituion, because it is not federal law. In particular, the Department of Justice has opined that "under clear Supreme Court precendent, any presidential decision in the current conflict concerning the detenion and trial of al-Qaida or Taliban militia prisoners would constitute a "controlling" Executive act that would immediately and completely override any customary international law."

This, in itself is interesting since the Evil Dr. Strangelaw, Professor Yoo in the previous memo said that treaties are specifically binding contracts between country and the Constitution recognizes them as such.

But there is an even more interesting part about this. This last paragraph we quoted can also be translated as: "If the President orders a National Guard private to hook you up to a hummer battery and rev the engine until sparks fly out your butt for the amusement of visiting brass from CentCom, the it's perfectly legal because to do so is not an expressly forbidden act by the President in the Constitution."

Dispassionate hyperbole aside, though. This is also a tacit acknowledgement that the order does in fact stop at the President's desk and that he is the one who needs the legal authority to make the decision for the aforementioned torture.

And now we've got ourselves a ballgame. Because the fact also remains that there are laws on the books against torture, and if the wiggly geographical arguements are not enough to get them out of this jam, then they are legally cooked.

Time to warm up the hotseat for impeachment. All of them, every last one, and as far as we're concerned, most of Congress are unindicted co-conspirators. Ask your Congressman what he did to try to hold the President accountable for committing war crimes in the in the name of the American people.

If any of this is so, then by the end of business Monday, I want to see W, Jethro, Granny and Ellie May all packed up on the jalopy and headed back down I-95 towards Texas, where the Texas Rangers will stop him at the border and haul his punk-ass off to jail for the rest of his life.

PLANET TEXAS
J.The past few years in the long twilight of the Bush Administration have been a never ending death march of lies, deceit and human evil not witnessed in America since, well... The Reagan years. Because of the commitment and hard work of the West Wing in providing a never ending stream of mind numbing horror to us every week, we sometimes neglect to ponder exactly what these people actually profess to believe in, and what, in part, they hope to pervert our fair nation into.

This idea came into perfect focus this week as the Texas Republican Party convened to shed their reptilian skins as they hammered out their platform. The Texas version of this dreadful ritual is particularly interesting, since our President and the Majority Whip of the House all hail from the state thats a whole other reality.

In fact, as these men rose from the rank stench of Texas to national office, they dragged their evil cronies and misshapen genetic experiments, errrr, ...lobbyists from campaign contributors to Washington. I suppose once you create a legion of wretched evil Homunculi, its hard to stifle the urge to let it loose to terrorize the villagers.

And the playbook these mooks use is straight out of the platform vomited forth from Texas this week. It was so dreadfully insane, so devoid of any grip on reality, that we just had to pimp it to you wireheads. Heres a taste of a few of our favorites brought to us via Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly:

The Party calls for the United States monetary system to be returned to the gold standard. Since the Federal Reserve System is a private corporation, has no reserves, and is not subject to taxation or audit, we call on Congress to abolish this institution and reassume its authority, enumerated by Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, for the coinage of money.

Dissolve the Federal Reserve? Return to the gold standard? How exactly are the capital markets supposed to function without the Reserve, exactly? Is congress going to open up a franchise branch in new York to sell Bonds?

Did anyone down in Texas actually contemplate the reaction of our creditors, the nice people who loaned us 6 Trillion dollars under the delusion that we werent freak insane? Do any of these geeks understand exactly what the Fed really does? Or why we left the Gold Standard?

Actually telling the international markets that we are even contemplating nuking our central bank or returning to the Gold Standard will begin a financial apocalypse that will make the 29 Crash look like an Olsen Twin birthday party. Are we supposed to trade goats and cabbages to other countries to pay off our crazy debt?...Hang on..there s more...

Congress should be urged to exercise its authority under Article III, Sections 1 and 2 of the United States Constitution, and should withhold appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in such cases involving abortion, religious freedom, and all rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.

Darn those founding Fathers!..Having a judiciary that makes us actually live up to the rights enumerated in the Bill of rights and the Constitution is making it really difficult for the Texas Republican Party to screw everything up. Why, they could bankrupt the country and turn it into a 700 club Theocratic funhouse if those damn judges wouldnt drone on about equal protection and trial by jury.

And treating women like human beings? Don't they read their damn bible? Holy Christmas! Federal courts should do what God intended them to do, protect the property rights of wealthy Texas millionaires!

Our Party pledges to do everything within its power to restore the original intent of the First Amendment of the United States and the concept of the separation of Church and State and dispel the myth of the separation of Church and State.

The funny here is that the original intent of the Establishment clause is laid out pretty clearly by the Founding Fathers. The United States at the founding had so many different Christian denominations, all claiming to have a better grip on True Christianity, that it was a no brainier to the Framers to not allow any particular faith into the public arena.

Many of the framers were deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, and its rejection of Organized religion and superstitious religious mysticism. Restoration of the original intent is the last thing these mensas want.

The Myth of the separation of church and state is in fact that it was not the intention of the Framers to separate religion from the exercise of political power. The analysis staff here at the Wire estimates this piece of the platform was conjured up on a cocktail napkin during the open bar on Casino Night. Many things seem reasonable after 25 bud lights that look a little dimwitted when you roll out of the rack in the morning.

S. The party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy....We publicly rebuke judges Chief Justice Murphy and John Anderson, who ruled that the 100 year-old Texas sodomy law is unconstitutional, and ask that all members of the Republican Party of Texas oppose their re-election.

Is it just us, or does it seem the Republican Party is obsessed with Sodomy? Can the gay bashing just stop for 10 seconds in the republican party? Ive never seen so many closet queens so desperate to prove they dont like sodomy, no sir, not in the least. How would they feel if jacking off like a coked up ape in the men's room at Hooters were made illegal?

Besides, God knows what these guys are worried about. Contrary to Republican myth, the dream of every gay man in America is not to be locked up in cell block A with a fat bald Republican Red neck. Your ass is safe GOP....

The Party believes that scientific topics, such as the question of universe and life origins and environmental theories, should not be constrained to one opinion or viewpoint. We support the teaching equally of scientific strengths and weaknesses of all scientific theories--as Texas now requires (but has yet to enforce) in public school science course standards. We urge revising all environmental education standards to require this also. We support individual teachers right to teach creation science in Texas public schools.

If there was any Science in Creation Science, they might have a leg to stand on. If you have no data, no testable hypothesis, and all you do to pimp your take is deliberately pretend to misunderstand real science, you dont have a competing theory.

Pimping your quant Creation myth as a science is bad enough, requiring it taught in science classes is just humiliating to the rest of us in this country who arent ignorant freaks. It doesnt help your theory when your adherents look and behave suspiciously like a tribe of Neanderthals who want to kill the poor bastard who discovered fire..

This next one is my personal favorite:

The Party urges Congress to support HJR 77, the Panama and America Security Act, which declare the Carter-Torrijos Treaty null and void. We support re-establishing United States control over the Canal in order to retain our military bases in Panama, to preserve our right to transit through the Canal, and to prevent the establishment of Chinese missile bases in Panama.

Chinese Missile Bases? In a platform stocked full of insane jabbering, this one has to take the cake. What in the name of all that is holy are these numb-nuts talking about? Hey guys, I guarantee that those Chinese restaurants in Panama dont have a missile silo concealed underneath.

So the Chinee Red Menace wants the Panama canal? And those crazy yellow guys are planning to put missile bases near the canal? Are you sure those arent UFO sites GOP? Maybe you should adjust the antennae on your tinfoil hats? The canal is worthless to the United States in any significant military sense, and only the Tom Clancy Mouth breathers in Texas think otherwise. Weve seen a lot of whacked out Commie Chinese hysteria, but this one really has to take the cake.

Theres more, but Mojo's eyes are bleeding yellow pus and our Producer is mumbling obscure Latin phrases to himself to try to drown us out. This is the America they want you to live in Wirehead. The America where Creationism is science, we put the fun back in sodomy, our financial system is blown to pieces and and were back on the barter system, the Federal Government is a evangelical theocracy and Panama is finally free of the threat of Chinese flying saucers.

Texas..coming soon to a state near you...

RUMINATIONS ON MEDICINE
J.Remember the days when your arguments and discussions about politics were about substantive policy debates as much as the horse race to office. Yeah...we dont either. But believe it or not, at one time, public policy was a priority at the White House, at least before these loons grifted their way in.

As we cringe at the avalanche of evidence that our government was trying to turn itself into a franchise office of the Gestapo, and the deification of Reagan, we are going to actually talk about real public policy issues. Yeah..thats why were on public radio folks..were just loony that way...

Now, as we all know, being poor and sick are just forms of God's Judgment on people for being wicked. And yet, John Kerry, being the evil liberal commie pinko from Taxachusettstan that he is, has been offering ideas from the stump about issues the public actually says it cares about, like education and health care. Lets take a look at some of his policy positions and see how they stack up against what the Bush Administration wants to pimp you:

The state of affairs in the Health Care markets is not particularly encouraging these days. Costs, driven by pharmaceuticals, an aging population with longer life spans, and expensive technology are, in part driving up premiums throughout the country. The American health Care model, which relies on employment as the primary vehicle to provide health care coverage for most Americans, is caught between two competing forces.

One, the expectations of Americans that sound medical decision making will place the patient before cost considerations or profit. Second, the business of health care, where employers seek to reduce the cost of providing coverage by selecting low cost plans and passing on the costs increasingly to employees.

Also driving the business side is the need for publicly owned health care companies to expand profits, placing more pressure on the medical side to ration care. This cost pressure is creating an effect called Adverse selection.

Adverse selection is where private health care plans cherry-pick the healthiest members of the risk pool with low premium , high deductible plans, a very enticing incentive for young people who need minimal care. That leaves the older and more expensive part of the pool to pay large premiums. This is particularly problematic for employers, who must insure older workers as well as younger ones.

We can see the effects in various places in America. The UFCW grocery workers strike in Southern California illustrates the cost pressure driving employers. The threat of Death Star retailer Walmart and its low cost advantage, coupled with the demands of capital markets to reduce labor costs, drove grocery stores into a savage brawl with their workers with the hopes of passing as much of the cost of health care as possible on the workers, which they succeeded in doing to a large degree.

The cost transfer from employer to employee is happening in every employment sector of the economy. Another area where we are seeing the effects is in the impact on Bankruptcy rates. According to the consumers union, A record 1.6 million families will file for bankruptcy in 2004, 90 percent from the middle class.

Health care costs contribute to half of all bankruptcies; that's 800,000 families in America who go under because they cannot afford their health care, in large part to a catastrophic illness in the family. Perhaps the most glaring example is the ranks of the uninsured. Close to 50 million Americans lack health care coverage.

Which really should be translated as, 50 million Americans must seek some kind of public assistance for even the most simple of health care needs because the private health care delivery model is unable to provide coverage.

S. The public system, comprised in large part by the Federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for the elderly and poor, must assume responsibility for this gap through demonstronably inefficient and expensive outlets like Emergency rooms. We dont really save any money by not insuring through the private market, we simply shift the cost to the public sphere. Here are some of the Kerry campaigns ideas:

Providing tax credits to make health insurance more affordable. 
Allowing Americans to buy into the same health plan available to members of Congress.
Expanding state-based programs to insure all children and millions of adults.
Allowing reimportation of Drugs to lower costs
Require the Federal Government to pay 75 percent of all medical costs over 50,000
A tax credit to cover 50 percent of premiums for small business
Government-subsidized private insurance to workers between jobs.

The Kerry indicatives are attempting to do a few things here. First, improve the quality and access to care for workers and reduce the cost burden for employers through tax credits and subsidies for small business.

Next, take three quarters of the cost of expensive health care over 50,000, which will directly impact bankruptcies and reduce the incentives for private health care plans to ration expensive care or deny access to the elderly and the less healthy.

Third, cover the gaps in coverage that propel cost shifting into the strained Emergency rooms and providers of last resort, which are key drivers in rising costs. Also, allowing reimportation of lower cost drugs, a direct slap at the grotesque pandering of the Republicans to their money lenders in the Pharmaceutical industry.

And what are the Presidents proposals: Associate Health Plans, a buyer group of small to medium businesses According to the Kerry people AHPs will offer minimal benefit plans targeted at healthy workers, leaving behind groups with greater health care needs that are more expensive to insure. 

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that nearly two-thirds of the promised savings from AHPs will come from insurance companies cherry picking small businesses with the healthiest employees and refusing to cover others.

The CBO is correct, this is a pander to the Chamber of Commerce, it does nothing to address the drivers of rising costs, just shifts the costs around again.

The Bush Health Care policy is to make it easier for employers to pass on the costs of health care, which will help their contributors and cause resentment for the subsidized coverage we give to the poor through Medicaid. Thats how they think, set the Middle Class against the poor while their corporate buddies rob them both.

This administration has offered no plan to address cost shifting, health cost related bankruptcies, adverse selection or cost shifting. It just pretends they dont exist. Their solution to rising drug costs is to fight reimportation and drop an expensive drug company subsidy scheme through Medicare on the elderly, which is so deranged an convoluted that even HHS cannot explain it and the health care plans are not required to provide anything expensive.

Kerry has offered several good proposal to address various problems with the American Health Care delivery model. The Bush Administrations plan is to take your money and give it to their buddies on K Street.

Can we put it any more clearly?

J. So our patriotic thought for the day: Rejecting the holy godhead of St. Ron, Commieslayer, means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft says... “It ain't torture if were doin' it to terrorists, 'course we gotta torture 'em first just make sure they ain't terrorists neether...”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...

Mojowire for 06.06; vol. 2, no. 09

J. Good morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 2, No. 08... I'm Mojo...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, June 06 2004, Day 1,156 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, we learn of yet more goofiness from the White House foreign relations team. Remember Nancy Reagan and her astrologer? This is better; the NSC gang consulting with honest to God end of the world cultists.

J. Next, the latest in the ongoing saga of Jose Padilla and the dread Lord Ashcroft's unremitting war on the Constitution. The latest round has us sounding the Red Alert and trying to convince us that blonde haired blue eyed Al Qaeda Hypno-assassins are infiltrating our noble institutions, which is of course why we have to deprive Padilla of all his rights.

S. Then Strychnine brings the horrifying noise regarding the reality of torture in Iraq and what the horribler part just might be: Chemical induced fear with some of Uncle Sydney's Famous Third Eye Cleanser...

J.Finally this morning, we want to have a word regarding the notion that only some people's military service is of any worth, even if their service was a thin tissue of lies, such as the case of our Maximum Leader.

...So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing...

LEFT BEHIND! (IN THE PREVIOUS GRADE)
J. As the editors here at the Wire were just on the verge of swilling down their first taste of life giving coffee one morning a few weeks back, this dreadful thing appeared on our monitors in our secret command bunker from Ron Perlstein at the Village Voice:

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that ''the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level''

This to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter.

Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

Can these people just get on the ball and Leave us Behind already? Why is the White House Briefing Christian Fundamentalist on ANYTHING? Did the Theocratic coup d'tat happen while I was in the Men's room at the Pub? Take your sedatives if you got any wireheads, this is going to hurt...alot..

To wit:

''The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be 'the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital,' the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state.

They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and Solomon's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

Just for starters, remember Elliot Abrams, former Reagan NSC staffer who was indicted by the Independent Counsel in the Iran Contra scandal and escaped romance in the Federal Clink through a Christmas day pardon from George the Elder?

I thought you might. So now he sweetalks insane religious cranks, who want to deprive the Palestinians of their legitimate political rights because of their freakish Apocalypse fantasies? Do I have that right?

''The Middle East was not the only issue discussed at the March 25 meeting. James Wilkinson, deputy national security advisor for communications, spoke first and is characterized as stating that the 9-11 Commission 'is portraying those who have given their all to protect this nation as ''weak on terrorism,'' ' " that "99 percent of all the men and women protecting us in this fight against terrorism are career citizens...

Tim Goeglein, deputy director of public liaison and the White House's point man with evangelical Christians, moderated, and he also spoke on the issue of same-sex marriage. According to the memo, he asked the rhetorical questions: 'What will happen to our country if that actually happens? What do those pushing such hope to gain?' ''

His answer:

''They want to change America.'' How so? He quoted the research of Hoover Institute senior fellow Stanley Kurtz, who holds that since gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavia, marriage itself has virtually ceased to exist. (In fact, since Sweden instituted a registered-partnership law for same-sex couples in the mid '90s, there has been no overall change in the marriage and divorce rates there.)

It is Matt Schlapp, White House political director and Karl Rove's chief lieutenant, who was paraphrased as stating 'that the Presidents Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level.'

Also present at the meeting was Kristen Silverberg, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. (None of the participants responded to interview requests.)''

So The National Security Councils Middle East point man and members of the White House's Domestic policy team are briefing fundamentalists gripping for the end times on policy issues? The reason we are pimping this to you wireheads, is that this really sheds light on the what the true agenda of this Administration is, and that is political victory at all costs.

And if that means that American policy in one of the worlds most notoriously violent and dangerous hotspots is turned into a disaster to satisfy the fantasies of an important voting bloc so be it. If the truth about the 9/11 attacks and improving our security by understanding them dings the Presidents electiblity, too bad commie, we always knew you hated America.

And if Gay Americans are deprived of fundamental rights in the name of a hate fueled perversion of Christian beliefs of love and compassion, well, I guess you don't have the secret decoder ring for the bible, now do you?

S. It is certainly not unusual for groups with a stake in a policy to speak directly to White House Staff about what is important to them, or for friendly groups to be briefed on issues. But what possible stake in American Foreign policy do evangelical groups have that you or I don't?

The stake is that a cult of christian apocalypse has grown up in the last few decades, fueled by pseudo intellectual diatribes like the Late Great Planet Earth and others, that place the final battle between Jesus and the forces of liberalism...errrr ...Satan somewhere in what was the biblical region where Ancient Israel existed.

So these groups are lobbyists with a stake in policy, and that is lobbying the White House to nurture the precise events designed to foster the freakin end of the world! This is an administration that specialized in stretching the boundries of outrage and credulity, but taking meetings from cranks about setting up the end of the world?

What is the big deal about shaping foreign policy in the Middle East to the so called literalism standards of eschatology cranks? Their view of this end game says that Jesus can only return to bring the big smackdown if the Temple of Solomon is rebuilt.

That temple was destroyed by the Romans 2000 years ago, and currently on that same spot is the 3rd most sacred shrine in Islam. You cannot rebuild that Temple without tearing down the Mosque that sits on it.

Besides the permanent end of any hope of peace in the Middle East, it is horrifically immoral and unethical to destroy someone's religious shrine, one that has sat there for over a thousand years, because of the way you interpret one of the most opaque and misunderstood chapters in the Bible.

Nothing in this plan would benefit the United States, the people of Israel or the Palestinians, it would only feed the superstitions of a small gang of wacky cultist who have parlayed the support of whack billionaires and a legion of devoted sheep like voters into some political clout at the White House.

And if we are going to honor the property rights of dissolved nations from 200 thousand years ago, then when exactly are we going to hand over all the choice real estate we grifted from Native Americans? Are the aliens going to file a lien on Roswell?

I think we're getting the picture here. Ripping apart a site sacred to a Billion people to satisfy some notion from a mystical text, an act that will guarantee an outbreak of murder and hatred and is quite possibly a crime against humanity under international law is so dumb I CANNOT BELIEVE ANYONE WALKING UPRIGHT SEROUSLY LISTENS TO IT, LET ALONE GET ACCESS TO THE WHITE HOUSE TO PIMP IT!

On a final note, the groups represenative in Israel, Kim Johnson, who fretted about the Witchcraft from harry Potter deserves a little play. Apparently this group, The Apostolic Congress's, has a misionary in Israel trying to convert those heathens on the down low, and she ran into a little trouble of the Hogwarts variety. Since Prisoner of Azkaban is rolling out next week, we thought you needed to hear how she described her Potter moment: check it:

''Two of the three nights in my apartment I have been attacked by a hair raising spirit of fear," she writes, noting the sublet contained a Harry Potter book; "at this time I am associating it with witchcraft...''

Uhh yeah...Kimmy... Harry Potter books cause Evil Spirits to harras you in your crib at night. That's who gets access to the White House folks, to whisper in George Bush's ear, while you sit at home and try to figure out how afford your mortgage and health care.

Mouth Breathers who think Childrens fantasy literature is full of the boogie man and plaguing them in there sleep... HELLLLO! This used to be grounds for a commitment hearing? Now Harry Potter fear, and just roll that around on the soft palette ......Harry...Potter...Fear is now the key to getting your name on the White House Guest List...

The lesson here is:
Harry Potter needs you to vote George W Voldemort out of office!..Be a Gryffindor and vote him out of office. Dumbldore would be proud!

ALERT CONDITION MEGALON
J. One of the most recent signs that the A Team in the Bush Administration has entered it's 1970's Clapton Heroin phase is the behavior of Attorney General John Ashcroft. A few weeks ago, the Attorney General and FBI Director John Mueller stepped onto a podium full of camera's to declare Code Alert Megalon in light of a new threat to America, Al Qaeda cells full of murderous terrorists with the disturbing ability to resemble Europeans.

Unknown at press time is how exactly these Al Queda cells manage this feat..uhhh...do you think he is referring to us?

Anyway, even the don't ask Don't tell press coverage the AG usually gets when his doctors fail to up his dosage at regular intervals was full of uncomfortable questions. You see, none of the information provided by the AG was new, in fact, it had been released to the public for months.

Virtually none of the information provided in the Lord Ascroftamort's press briefing was new. Even more curious, no one from the Department of Homeland Security and their Monster Movie chief, Dr Frankenstein, was present at the briefing.

When in a rare burst of journalistic curiosity people asked DHS why they played hooky, apparently no one at the department, including the head of it, was aware that the Attorney General was going to raise the Alert Level from Godzilla to Megalon.

So let me get this straight. The Attorney General sticks his frightening grill onto my television screen to crank up the threat level when he has no fresh Intel to share, and when the department nominally in charge of determining threats and responding to them hasn't been told the AG is going to do this?

Memo to the Bush Administration: If you want the American people to believe you are competent on domestic security issues, the flunkies you have in charge of that task really should be and act competent.

Not even the mighty Wurlitzer of Darth Melman or Rove Sideous can disguise the fact that the Attorney General was caught red-handed peddling recycled intelligence to the press Corp as a new revelation in an attempt to spook ma and pa kettle into suffocating themselves in their trailer homes sealed in duct tape and plastic sheeting to prevent the Al Queda Devil Rain from melting their faces off like some cheap seventies Shatner horror movie. Must...Ductape...trailer....

Unfortunately, the Attorney General escaped from his crypt yet again last week when he and a select group of cronies decided to release a list of charges about Jose Padilla. To those of you who are just jumping onto the Wire Bandwagon along with the hordes of other wire clones, let's step into the wayback machine.

Jose Padilla is the American Citizen that the FBI nabbed shortly after 9/11. The FBI claimed he had numerous contacts with Al Queda and participated in the planning and execution of the 9/11 plot. Padilla is an American citizen arrested on American Soil Nevertheless, the Administration declared him an enemy combatant and shipped him off without access to a lawyer, no preliminary hearing.

This is consistent with the Administrations exciting new contribution to American Jurisprudence; Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights is just some meaningless drivel from some 18th Century American Hippies. For heavens sake, didn't you know the Enlightenment started in France, home of the liberty fry? ZOOT ALORS!

The ability of the Administration to designate Padilla and other American citizens as Enemy combatants and whisk them off without hearing or access to counsel is under consideration by the Supreme Court. In fact, the Court is due to hand down a decision here in a few weeks on this.

S. So it's passing suspicious that the Attorney General should decide to release a horde of information that he claims was obtained from Padilla during his captivity. According to Lord Ashcroft, Padilla has conspired with Al Queda leaders and traveled with them on multiple occasions that he tried to work and train with Al Queda, and a variety of other charges related to his relationship with Al Queda.

Their contention basically is that Padilla is a bad guy who although was a bench warmer on the Al Queda Team, was ready to jump in and hit a big shot for them...04 baby!

It's been one of the great revelations for the editorial staff here at the Wire that whenever you think the Bush Administration has so debased itself they cannot devolve anymore, along comes a new level of awful that could only come from the diabolically stupid mind of John Ashcroft.

Not only is this a teenage moot court attempt to sway the Supremes, what possible store should we put in any information extracted from the Padilla when he was held incommunicado without lawyer or judicial review. Just weeks after we Abu Gharib pictures, is the AG Sure he wants to pimp us that Padilla provided correct information without the Limbaugh "hazing " they practiced at the Abu Gharib chapter of Skull and Bones?

Under American law, nothing obtained from Padilla is admissible, since he was never appraised or granted a single right that his rightfully his under law. Dalia Lathwick in Slate lays out why this notion of rights for suspect Al Queda Devil Rainmakers is more than just a Blue State Whining:

The U.S. Constitution didn't simply hatch out of an egg one morning. Like the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights was largely conceived to correct for failures of earlier systems. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh was tried for treason and not permitted to cross-examine his accuser

This, it turns out, engendered unreliable evidence. The Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause was the constitutional remedy for this problem. Unremitting and unwanted prosecutorial interrogation could lead to false confessions. This made for unreliable evidence. The Fifth Amendment was, in part, the constitutional remedy for this.

Years of delay prior to trials degraded evidence. The Sixth Amendment's right to a speedy trial was the constitutional remedy for this. Indefinite government detention without charges led to innocent men languishing in prison without recourse. The right to habeas corpus is thus codified in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution to remedy this.

We sometimes forget that the purpose of these and other constitutional protections is not only to let guilty guys roam free (attractive though that prospect may seem), the purpose is also to protect the quality of the evidence used in criminal trials. A conviction based on a tortured confession isn't justice. It's theater.

And that 's exactly what AG Ashocroftamar and his monkey's have been practicing since 9/11, theater. A wretched Kabuki theater where American's do not possess the inalienable rights declared by Tom Jefforson in the Declaration, but are grudgingly granted at the whim of political appointees in Republican Administrations who wouldn't wipe their ass with the Bill of Rights, let alone respect it as living document and roadmap to the American value system.

Jeeesus! We're going to have to strap down every Jefferson statue in American to keep them from animating into life to exact a wretched monster movie justice on us for pissing away our rights to a demented religious zealot and his fear mongers in the DOJ and DOD who hate democracy like a bad case of foot fungus they would rather cut their feet off for than allow to grow and fester.

The Supremes need to summon the mighty spirits of the Founders and direct a bolt of soul crushing celestial lighting to the wonderlicks like the Solicitor General who pimped them the horrible lie that the Administration would never abuse their authority over people they hold in captivity.

Jose Padilla may indeed be a bad guy, but this administration doesn't know the difference between the Padilla's and the European looking enemies posing as political opponents. That's why we have a bill of rights and that's why this AG should not be allowed anywhere near or legal institutions.

Somebody change their passwords and get their IDs , they need to be given 15 minutes to clean out their desk before Security throws them through a plate glass window..preferably head first....

And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
S9 Greetings from the inky black depths of space, citizens. We know it's been an awfully long time since you've heard from us -- our communications subsystem has been in a level nine diagnostic loop for the last several weeks running -- and a lot of weirdness has gone down
without any of it being subjected to our patented S9 station analysis methodology. There is much worth talking about. At the moment, however, we're still managing a Jupiter-sized gut-rumbler over the so-called liberal media coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal.

The first thing you will notice is that we are refusing to be polite and refer to the scandalous behavior as 'abuse' -- oh no, we have heard quite enough from the likes of the Oxycontin Whorehopper, Rush Limbaugh, about how the worst of the abuse was when they forced some of
the prisoners to wear women's underwear on their heads. When we use the word torture, we mean torture -- as in, the sort of abuse that the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly regards as torture.

And would the pinheads in Congress -- like Steve King from the 5th District in Iowa for example -- who think that even 'abuse' is too strong a word for what happened, who prefer to use the word 'hazing' instead, would those pinheads please kindly shut the fsck up. I'm this close
to deciding that the whole idea of having a Congress was bad, because of people like him.

Let's be clear: forcing some of the prisoners to wear women's underwear on their heads was probably the least problematic of the interrogation tactics that are the heart of the scandal. The bigger issue is the homicide investigations.

Apparently, the Department of Defense would like to know how some of the prisoners died in custody and why the medical examiners are declaring so many of the deaths to be homicide. As of two weeks ago, the Pentagon was telling us that 37 people have died in U.S. custody at various prison and interrogation facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and other undisclosed locations. Of those, it says ten of them are likely homicides of detainees by interrogators or U.S. soldiers. Yet, strangely -- while some of the cases date as far back as December 2002 (a year and a half ago), nobody has been charged with murder or assault yet.

According to NBC News, the latest report circulating the halls of power in Washington, D.C. goes to some extent in explaining the stress and duress techniques used by our peerless interrogation teams for extracting information out of terrorists (who as we have explained elsewhere are obviously terrorists or they wouldn't be in an interrogation facility).

Our heroic, valiant fighting men and women have been holding prisoners underwater and making them believe they would be killed. Other leaders of the America of tomorrow have been wrapping prisoners up in sleeping bag and smothering them, just to show they can do it.

But what really gets up my craw? The Pentagon is now investigating reports that prisoners were kept hooded for cruel lengths of time and forced to take doses of unknown mild-altering drugs. That's the part that has me extremely piffed out. It would be easier to dismiss if it weren't for the fact that absolutely no one on the medical staff at Abu Ghraib, or any of these other interrogation facilities is at all, is on record trying to raise the visibility of the problem. Those people swear out a hippocratic oath, don't they? What happened to that?

Oh wait. Somebody had to be administering the drugs to the prisoners that would soften them up for interrogation. It would naturally have been the doctors.

This is were my threshold of tolerance is just about reached. Because let's try to remember how drug torture works. I know I've explained this on the show before, but it's been awhile -- so let's go over the basics.

They way you use mind-altering drugs in interrogation is as a way to amplify the fear in the subject's mind. Some of the more powerful psychotomimetic drugs can do this in very small amounts. In large amounts they can cause lasting psychological damage. Have another good
long look at those pictures that the Washington Post ran last month and put some time into studying the facial expressions on the poor devil standing there naked in the jail and being terrorized by dogs on leashes. If he looks like he might be tripping on 1200 micrograms of
Uncle Sydney's world famous bicycle oil, then you wouldn't be the first to notice it.

LSD is not exactly the best drug for use in torturing information out of prisoners. There are newer ones that probably work better: paralyzers and more powerful hallucinogens. The whole goal of this tactic is to scare the living daylights out of you, so you'll talk, and all the Acid does is make you more bitter and twisted about surviving the whatever else your captors are planning to do.

Perhaps the most horrific tactic in the drug torture bag is to get your prisoner hooked on heroin, then cut off his supply to make him suffer withdrawal. Tell us what we want to know and the rest of the speedball is yours.

When NBC News is telling us that prisoners are routinely drugged and abused in American interrogation facilities, this is what I understand them to mean.

I don't know what Congressmen King is thinking, but something tells me the extent of his thinking on the matter is that the prisoners must have been given too much vicodin for the bus ride to the new facility... those damned hippies, giving away free drugs.

STRAW MEN WITH FEET OF CLAY
J. A strange thing happened to me and some friends on our way to adulthood. After wearing the uniform of our country and performing what service we could, we came home and were summarily dubbed the noblest of all creatures what walks God's Green Earth -- the Great American Veteran

Feted with BBQs, Federal Holidays, Flags on Cars and our own line of fully posable action figures, it started to occur to some of us... "Hey...can't we just go home and be lawn care specialists or lawyers or roofers? Are we going to have to spend the rest of our lives up here?"

Yeah, there are the occaisional moments of bliss, like laying the pimp-hand smack-down on some pasty-faced bullet head on the quad of your favorite campus trying to sell you God-Mom-And-Apple-Pie Barry Goldwater style, but without the stones necessary to step up when his number is called.

Yeah...those are some good times...

But those moments are fleeting, and these days, not even the exhalted status of Red-Blooded-American-Fighting-Man is enough to save one from the slings and arrows of outrageous political fortune.

You know, there was a time when a politician's veteran status was just another consideration, people took it for what it was worth, and it was just out there. But these days, that dynamic has changed. Now a person finds they must actually defend their veteran record.

Hard to say when this started...perhaps when the Republicans wanted to make a big deal out of Bill Clinton not serving in Viet Nam, or when the Dems tried to make it turn about for bagging on George the Younger for not serving in Viet Nam, but only pretending.

And therein lies the heart of the issue. In past, it was simply considered that a man who would claim a veteran's past would not lie about such things, it was simply not done, so heinous was the punishment and public disgrace for lying about so sublime a thing, therefore there was no need to question it.

And on the odd occasion someone was outed for gilding the lilly, their public life stopped on a dime, and they spent the rest of eternity in wood-paneled trailers hawking used cars or air conditioning -- such is the ring of burning Hades reserved for those people.

But our current administration has taken this whole beatification of veterans to a new extreme, which of course leads to the other extreme. What happens when the robots decide their makers are not their betters? Well in the case of the Bush Administration, their records of service are dragged through the mud, usually by people who lacked the initial character themselves to sack-up and stand a post.

Then there are those who spend a good deal of time fobbing off on those who decide not to serve, for whatever reason, and that there is something morally weak about those who don't go. Last time I checked, there is nothing in the Constitution, U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, any law anywhere in the United States that confers citizenship status based on military service.

Put down the VC Skull Bong and step away from the Starship Troopers.

But the only thing we find more reprehensible than those who beat up on non-veterans, are those who denigrate veterans' service because their politics don't line up with their preconceived notions of what "a veteran ought to believe."

Instead of just being allowed to put their uniform away, veterans are now being put in a place where right wing political forces (because, honestly, how many lefties out there are beating up on vets... seriously, who, name one, I dare you, I double-freekin'-dog dare you) have decided that there is no depth too low too which they will not go to retain political power.

S. The hack jobs done on Max Cleland of Georgia and the presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee, John Kerry, should be enough to convince just about anyone without tinfoil wrapped around their head in tens of thousands of micrometer sized coils, that the Bush administration has about as much real use for "veterans" as they do for crotch rot.

Max Cleland, who's personal road in life ran through the picturesque little hamlet of Khe San in the very far away land of Viet Nam, has been the subject of these kinds of abuses. Why? Well, apparently, after his service to his country in Viet Nam, he decided that he simply wanted to prevent his country from doing something that stoopid again, so he decided to become a Congressman.

As a fairly liberal Democrat, though, he had a certain amount of respect in certain circle given his service. That is, until the Bush Lie Machine cranked up. Ann Coulter crawled out from under her rock for long enough to write scurilous lies about Cleland publicly, part of which were used in the horrible smear campaign that resulted in Cleland's recent defeat.

And while we're on the subject, why do we even care what Ann Coulter has to say... about anything I mean. Why on earth is she even given the time of day. She is a dirtbag, hack lawyer, borderline sociopath, Mayberry-machivellian wannabee who thinks she's William Buckley. THE TRUTH IS NOT IN HER! Why on earth do you conservatives listen; we can argue your rhetoric better than she can, give us a call sometime, the first shot's always free.

But besides the minor league ball of Ann Coulter's, there is the truly monstrous punkery emitting from the Political Office in the West Wing, where some half-bright speech writers have cooked up the delightful little "Swfit Boat Liars Against John Kerry."

As you might know, JK was a river boat sailor during Viet Nam, served with distinction, honor and valor and then left the service to perform an even more heroic act: standing up to his own government to end our involvement in South East Asia, uttering the famous words to the U.S. Senate: "Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake."

Well, Karl and Rovians couldn't have that just careening around the country, threatening to send them all back to their respective fast food fry-a-lators. So in the past few months, they have spent considerable energy and resources trying to denigrate JK's military service with a series of straw-man proxies.

We can question our public sevants, including those in uniform, on how they do -- or did -- their jobs. It is not only allowed in our society, it is required. But that is not what is happening with these people.

Look, what these horrible exercises should be telling you is that a.) vets service, while a good and honrable thing, really shouldn't be used as some sort of litmus test. We appreciate what they do, but the best thing we could do for vets as citizens is just let them get on with being citizens themselves after their service.

And b.) That no one, and we mean no one has a lock on patriotism, either due to service or lack thereof. And the Bush administration is clearly the example of this particular little character quirk. Of course, the quick exception to all this is when vets turn on other vets for political gain. There is a lack of character that goes with that makes me wonder why some people were ever allowed to wear the uniform.

Really, this is very simple. Turning vets into media roadkill for your own personal political gain, while draping yourself in the flag our country is an act so unAmerican, there are some in this administration who should be shown the door. No, not on the White House, but on America. Get the hell out, never darken our door again.

Most vets would just like a little respect for the job they did and were underpaid for; decent job benefits like anyone else in this country who works in a tough profession. They don't need people expropriating them for cheap political theater, or running down their service because they lack the proper political flavor of the week.

All most vets really want is just a little respect and a little time off from being a "veteran." That's all. Well... that and a drink on the house on Veterans' Day.

J. So our patriotic thought for the day: Veterans disagreeing with the President means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft says... “Warning...Monster Island reports Monster Attack Imminent, seek Monster Shelter Immediately!”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...

// posted by van.mojo  @ 11:27  —  |