This was being forwarded in an email and it really stuck in my craw. I decided to answer Ben, and I wasn't exactly nice about it - then again, I don't feel like being nice to their kind anymore.

Published 9/2/2005 11:59:59 PM by American Spectator Online - By Ben Stein

A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:

Hey Ben, looks like you're as good at the smoke and mirrors, defect and reflect as the president you so blindly support.

1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.

No duh - how long did it take you to figure out that one?

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.

Again, another another stroke of genius.

3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

Gee Ben, this is really getting good. How in the world did you acquire this vast amount of knowledge?

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.

Ahem. Here's where you start to stray, Benny Boy. Better get yourself some abracadabra. First and foremost, there is a vast and overwhelming amount of evidence that global warming has much to do with the burning of fossil fuels, specifically coal burning power plants and automobiles. The scientific community has reached a consensus on this. True to form, Bush and his boys are slow on the uptake. Despite having it explained to them over and over, they just don't get it. Either that, or they are more interested in the profits of energy companies than the future of people. You chose.

Though Americans make up just 4 percent of the world's population, we produce 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning -- by far the largest share of any country. In fact, the United States emits more carbon dioxide than China, India and Japan, combined.

The scientific position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and endorsed by the National Science Academies is that the average global temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2°of the G8C since the late 19th century, and that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities"

But they are wrong and the neocon Bushites are right.

Now who believes in sorcery?

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

Nice try. Georgie Boy's sins have to do with FEMA and especially, Corps of Engineer protections for the city of New Orleans.

A massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people prompted Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA to address the flood control problems in and around New Orleans. After 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane and flood-control dollars.

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain . Flood control budgets were cut by over 40% between 2001 and 2005.

In 2004, for the first time in 37 years, the Corps halted all work on the New Orleans levee system.

The Pontchartrain breech was responsible for flooding 80% of the city of New Orleans the day after Katrina struck. So in a nutshell, not only did he cut the funds to protect New Orleans, he did so in the name of an invasion he couldn't manage either. Our snake-oil commander in chief gave contracts to his buddies, made our brave troops in Iraq wait in long lines for food and supplies and shamefully, didn't even make sure they were properly armored - while simultaneously guaranteeing the destruction of New Orleans.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

Have you been into Rush Limbaugh's stash? Smoking with the twins? Let's stick to the real issues, Benny. There are bad people in every city, town and countryside in America. Disasters bring out the best and the worst in all of us.

7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

Minority appointments aren't proof of total inclusiveness and racial empathy. They do not make him understanding of the plight of urban poor any more than he has an understanding of the hardworking middle class or farmers struggling to make a living off the land. They are simply not a part of his world and never will be.

8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

Yeah, right. How dare those people in Louisiana and Mississippi have any expectations at all - especially when the federal government knew for YEARS that this was coming. Studies involving the pump and levy system predicted the turn of events almost down to a "T."

Clearly, effective crisis management at the federal level was more than lacking. Like it or not, he is the president and as much as he tries to dodge it, that office requires he accept responsibility. Bush appointed a person to head FEMA who had absolutely no credentials to head a Federal Emergency Management Agency. Secondly, he moved FEMA deeper into the bureaucratic quagmire by putting it under "Homeland Security" - an agency dedicated to fighting terrorism, not natural disasters. Even neocon darling and Mississippi Senator Trent Lott added his voice to a growing number of lawmakers who feel FEMA should be taken out of the Homeland Security Department.

9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

You really got me laughing now! How about over 3000 Louisiana and over 4000 Mississippi National Guard troops sent to Iraq who could be working to help the people of their home towns? Are you going to try and tell me that having over 7000 trained professionals there as 'johnny on the spot', performing their intended stateside mission, wouldn't have made a difference? And that pesky levy on Lake Ponchatrain, the one Bush cut funding for - all in the name of Iraq? All I can say is the twins must have some really good bud.

10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.

And let me guess - your idea of helping the morale of the nation is for everyone to swallow what is spoon fed to them from the Whitehouse; to allow our government to advance lies and slide unhindered toward totalitarianism and fascism ?

11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

No, but if we are to hold this man accountable for his lies, high crimes, and neglect and abuse of the American people, Voodoo city is just as good as a place to start as any.

12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

You are too funny. And the price of eggs in China? Benny, you and your neocon cronies need to find some new tactics. Sooner or later, more and more of the American public will figure out your techniques of using distractions and riling emotions to detract from the real issues and facts at hand. You like to use the flag and false claims of patriotism to beguile. You're in the business of befuddling because you can't truthfully answer the honest questions before you. Slowly, but surely, more and more Americans are getting damn tired of your kind trying to hide behind their flag - and they will flush you out and expose you for the charlatan dogs you are.

________________________________________________________ 

  Three cheers for a true patriot who is standing up to the Bush propaganda machine - Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan was recently a part of the "Freedom and Faith" tour and said of Bush "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," as the audience of 200 people cheered. You go girl!

Sheehan lost her first born to Bush's war of lies.

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said. 

  I'm not sure what it will take for the long time supporters of the Bush administration to admit that GWB has committed treason and that they were lied into war - perhaps they never will. For the rest of us, the Downing Street Memo only serves to bolster what many of us have suspected for a long time.

I wish I could say this is something new and startling, but there have been more than several patriots (yes, true patriots - not the trumped up, manufactured kind) come forth to warn us the intelligence wasn't a mere "failure" but being manipulated by the administration.

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

 

  Who Forged the Niger Documents?
By Ian Masters, AlterNet
Posted on April 7, 2005, Printed on April 8, 2005

A former counterterrorism chief claims that the now discredited documents that showed Iraq trying to purchase uranium were fabricated right here in the United States.

Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Ian Masters with Vincent Cannistaro, the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, which aired on the Los Angeles public radio KPFK on April 3, 2005.

More...

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21704 

  "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!" (Matthew 23:23-24) 

  by Ina Hughes


We pray for children,
who put chocolate fingers everywhere
who like to be tickled,
who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants,
who sneak Popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks.
who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who've never squeaked across the floor in new sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
who cover themselves with Band-Aids and sing off-key,
who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
who slurp their soup.
And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind,
who can't find any bread to steal,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
whose monsters are real.
We pray for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the car pool,
who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children
who want to be carried,
and for those who must;
for those we never give up on,
and for those who don't get a chance;
for those we smother,
and for those who will grab the hand of anybody
kind enough to offer



by Ina Hughes (FROM: A Prayer for Children, 1995, William Morrow Company, New York 

  There's an e-mail circulating the Internet regarding a 9/11 widow and her visit to Iraq. While reading it my only thought was - If this doesn't demonstrate deliberate deceit; how the propaganda was continually and repeatedly peddled by this administration, I don't know what will. It reads, in part -

"To me, those troops were there to avenge the murder of my husband and three
thousand others. When I got to the microphone I told them we had not
made this journey for condolences but to thank them and to tell them that
the families of 9/11 think of them every day. They lifts our hearts." - Christy Ferer

Ferer addressed US troops as a part of an Armed Forces Entertainment Office and USO-sponsored trip to Iraq. She is not only a 9/11 widow, but also New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's liaison to the families of the victims of Sept. 11.
She traveled to Iraq on Fathers Day, 2003.

The Bush administration had no qualms about using her to peddle their lies and she, believing the the propaganda machine who sponsored her, became a willing accomplice.

The result was cheering troops, a teary-eyed general and a prevailing delusion fueled by the strong emotions of patriotism and duty - all carefully staged by the Bush web of lies.

Faulty intelligence - yeah right.