AUSTIN, Texas -- There's been so much in print about how Daddy 41's people are back in the saddle, I was terrified when I saw a photo of Dan Quayle among the pack. If they've called back Dan Quayle to lend intellectual heft, we're all dead ducks. Fortunately, it was just a file picture of Quayle with the old team.

            It does seem that we may be going back to the typical modus operandi of Dubya. Poppy Bush has helped Junior out of the Vietnam War, his failures in the oil business and other efforts all of his "adult" life.

            Unfortunately for us and for the world, the people from the first Bush administration who initially joined this administration were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Not exactly the most diplomatic, forward-looking, helpful people to be guiding Dubya.

            During the first Gulf War, Bush 41 and his administration knew what it would be like if they tried to take Baghdad -- and opted not to go in. Now, the more sober-headed people from that administration are moving in to try to clean up the mess Junior made in his Iraq excursion.

Have the Democrats learned nothing? Electing a majority leader by 'secret ballot'? Or, is this particular nonsense in sync with other inexplicable strategies, particularly the Dem's decision to use Internet voting in the presidential primaries of 2000, 2004 and 2008?

With all the problems the electorate has faced with a voting system that is completely non-transparent (i.e., "secret"), it defies imagination why House Democrats would resort to a "secret ballot" to elect their majority leader. So much for demonstrating the courage of their convictions.

A 'secret ballot" election is the perfect set-up for those who want to rig an election. See: Vote Fraud 101 - "When elections are conducted by secret ballot, there exists no hard evidence of how people voted. "Voters hand over to election officials a pile of anonymous ballots. For those with the appropriate incentive, substituting ballots is duck soup." Source: me

The secret ballot was created in Australia in 1856. It came to America in the 1880's. And ever since then, in elections here and around the world, nobody really knows anything for sure.

Abstract

Democracy needs to defend itself from the many immediate threats - technology, imperialism, global economic powers, human passivity and reactionary religion. Reactionary religion has taken the lead worldwide in rejecting pluralism and democracy, viewing both values as gateways to secularism and decadence. Both modernism and post-modernism have failed to fully address the success of the continued political advances of the religious right worldwide.

A new, postmodern politics of meaning is needed to address basic human needs currently served by the cosmology of traditional religious orthodoxy. Progressive thinkers in philosophy, religion and in critical theory must work dialectically to retain the good of religion and spirituality, the need for ultimate meaning, and the challenge of reducing negative, anti-democratic impulses. These impulses are embodied in theocracy and a fear of life. Until religion is totally reinvented or evolves to a higher level we will have to defend many democratic values from religious extremists. A live and let live political philosophy is a good defense of democracy.

CORNUCOPIA, WI: The Cornucopia Institute, the nation's most aggressive organic farming watchdog, has filed a formal legal complaint with the USDA asking them to investigate allegations of illegal “organic” food distribution by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Cornucopia has documented cases of nonorganic food products being sold as organic in Wal-Mart’s grocery departments.

“We first noticed that Wal-Mart was using in-store signage to misidentify conventional, nonorganic food as organic in their upscale-market test store in Plano, Texas,” said Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute. Subsequently, Cornucopia staff visited a number of other Wal-Mart stores in the Midwest and documented similar improprieties in both produce and dairy sections.

Cornucopia notified Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott in a letter on September 13, 2006 alerting the company to the problem and asking that it address and correct the situation on an immediate basis. But the same product misrepresentations were again observed weeks later, throughout October, at separate Wal-Mart stores in multiple states.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Having watched election coverage nonstop all week, I sometimes wake screaming, "Bipartisanship!" and scare myself.

            Of all the viral members of the media who have been suggesting that the Dems cooperate with their political opponents, the one who rendered me almost unconscious with surprise was Newt Gingrich.

            Newt Gingrich, the Boy Scout. Newt Gingrich, the man who sat there and watched Congress impeach and try Bill Clinton for lying about having an extramarital while he, Newt Gingrich, was lying about having an extramarital affair. (This all took place during his second marriage. The first one ended when he told his wife he was divorcing her while she was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment.)