HEADLINES

Sorry for the slowdown at The Bluest Fist. Life has overwhelmed me these last few months. Seems like it’s been a helluva winter for everybody. So, here are a few thoughts and updates in lieu of a long meditation. If you haven’t looked at the website lately, there are a number of items up that I did not email to you, so have a look and comment if you like.

I’d urge you to read the lengthy expose in the New York Times about how the Bush White House’s propaganda machine has infiltrated and manipulated the mainstream media (have people stopped calling it the “liberal media” yet or should I continue to pee myself laughing?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html

In other news, the Manchester Union Leader has the story on the Republican Party official in New Hampshire convicted for jamming Democratic Party phone lines the day of the 2002 elections. Chuck McGee (no relation!) looks startlingly like he could be Karl Rove’s more rotund brother and will now be doing 7 months in the clink. The dirty tricks of the Republican Party look more Nixonian by the minute.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=51820

And on Social Security, this actually appeared in the right-wing Washington Times (thanks to Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos for pointing it out):

A senior Republican senator said, "The message coming out of the White House is that we'll fix Social Security by raising your taxes and cutting your retirement benefits and, to get something passed, we'll forget about the personal retirement accounts we promised." The senator said that is like telling voters, "Never vote for Republicans again -- we lie."

Ouch! Sounds like someone actually told the American public the truth about Social Security…

I’ve been promising a piece on the Death Penalty for months now and I really do hope to get it out to you soon – I’d like it to be more of an essay than a news item and that’s why it’s taking so long. Meantime, you should know if you don’t already that the Supreme Court has now within the last couple years outlawed the Death Penalty for the mentally retarded and for minors. The right-wing is absolutely appalled that a Court would have the audacity to tell us that we are not allowed to remain part of that exclusive club (China, Iran, Syria) that allows the State to hang, electrocute or lethally inject with poison handicapped people and kids for the purpose of killing them. Imagine! The Bush Administration was of course highly critical of this outrageous decision by the Supremes.

Lastly, the latest official statistics state that 1513 American soldiers have died in Iraq, including 647 since the handover of power and 81 since the recent Iraqi elections. Well over 11,000 soldiers have been wounded. A minimum of 16, 231 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting, though estimates of civilian deaths resulting from the invasion go much higher.