AUSTIN, Texas -- The first thing I ever learned about politics was never to let anyone else define what you believe, or what you are for or against. I think for myself.

I am not "you liberals" or "you people on the left who always ..." My name is Molly Ivins, and I can speak for myself, thank you. I don't need Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove to tell me what I believe.

Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of "argument" for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what "liberals" think, and then demonstrate how silly it is. Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I've ever heard those on the right claim "liberals" believe, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.

Legislation aiming to prevent counties, towns and cities from making local decisions about our food supply is being introduced in states across the nation. Fifteen states recently have introduced legislation removing local control of plants and seeds. Eleven of these states have already passed the provisions into law.

These highly orchestrated industry actions are in response to recent local decisions to safeguard sustainable food systems. To date, initiatives in three California counties have restricted the cultivation of genetically modified crops, livestock, and other organisms and nearly 100 New England towns have passed various resolutions in support of limits on genetically engineered crops.

None of the recent speculation about armed service recruitment failures speaks to fundamental questions, which are increasingly being answered in the negative:

Will you die for George W. Bush?  Are you willing to kill for him?

Are you eager to send your daughter or son to die for Bush in a war based on lies and invented connections to September 11? Are you ready to assume responsibility for the torture, maiming and death of innocent citizens of a formerly sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the death of 3000 American citizens on that day of infamy? Can you possibly think it wise, can you justify in any way, sacrificing your child to the arrogance and dishonesty of one man of flawed judgment and nonexistent moral sensibility? Are Bush’s political ambitions worth more than your own life, or the life of your family member?

Will you die for him?
The Army and National Guard have been failing to meet their recruiting goals for the last four months. Summer is typically the time they have their greatest success in recruiting and they are counting on this summer to make up for their shortcomings in the previous months. They are increasing their efforts and making more promises to get America's youth to sign up for war. As a result those of us who oppose the war need to step up our efforts in counter-recruitment as well. Below is an interview with a counter-recruitment activist from Washington State that provides directions on how to get started and documents to assist in your efforts.

Clint Coppernoll is the father of two, a son who is a lawyer and a daughter who is an activist and student in San Francisco. He is the husband of an activist organizer and midwife, Belinda Coppernoll. He has been a peace activist and organizer since 1969 and has worked with many organizations on a range of issues including immigrant and farm workers rights, prison reform, and open access to the political system for all Americans.

It’s time we all get together on the same page and talk to our representatives about a problem we have in this country. This problem is rooted in ignorance and it is made worse by irresponsible policymakers. I’m talking about the fight to make marijuana legal, if for nothing else but for the plenty of us who absolutely need it to stay alive or at least bearably comfortable in our last days.

Is there a single psychologist or phychiatrist in this country -- in any country -- who would be willing to put his or her credibility on the line and say that George W. Bush is not a bloodthirsty lunatic, a liar and a fool?

I thought not.

I am finding it more and more difficult to hear what he is saying. Each time Bush opens his mouth, he seems to be attempting to channel a loon, but unfortunately, its weird cries are all but drowned out by the maniacal barking of a hyena. That would be fine if he were out in the Texas boonies with the rest of the loons and hyenas rather than illegally occupying the chair reserved for our elected head of state -- arguably the most powerful man in the world.

How long are we going to allow this war criminal to keep killing innocent men, women and children while wiping his brow and complaining how much work -- hard work -- it is? How long, America? Until they're all dead under the weight of our liberation?

The Democratic National Committee's investigation into Ohio's 2004 presidential election irregularities is the perfect postscript to the party's 'election protection' efforts last fall: it is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and a party that still doesn't fully understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.

The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant in Ohio’s cities during the 2004 presidential election. It cites and spends most of its time analyzing the most visible problems: from shortages of voting machines in minority precincts, to unreasonable obstacles to voter registration, to disproportionate use of provisional ballots on Election Day among new voters and Democratic constituencies, to inadequate poll worker training and election administration, to poor post-Election Day record keeping.

The harder they come, the harder they fall.

The legendary reggae song says it all about the evil, soon over Karl Rove.

For years we've heard only of the GOP Guttermeister's "genius". But for all his alleged success, what matters most about Karl Rove's legendary career is that the world is a much worse place for who he is and what he's done. He leaves no legacy except pain and suffering, anger and devastation.

The gameplayers love Rove's uncanny mastery of the dirty trick and knife in the back, of the lowest common denominator and the perfectly timed smear. Gay marriage and flag burning, bigotry and fundamentalism, immigration and abortion....Rove's use of anything handy to divide and confuse has been peerless. No American better understands those ultimate fascist mainstays, the Terror Card and the Big Lie.

Rove began as a dirty trickster for Richard Nixon. He took the dubious George W. Bush and made him governor, then president, then "war president." He's engineered a near-absolute takeover of the American media and government in ways without precedent.

I am in process of writing another book on Christian pacifism and would like to include some interviews of conscientious objectors from WW2, Korea, Viet-Nam, Kuwait. The purpose of my book is to show that American Christian churches have failed in upholding their responsibility as preachers of the gospel of the Prince of Peace, and I want to know the attitude that their respective denominations and ministers had toward them for deciding to be C.O.

Because I live in Central California, if any of you can be so kind to either forward my request to any C.O.’s that you know in California, or else to forward to me their address or some manner of contacting them, so I can interview them.

Thank you so much,
Daniel H. Shubin
www.peacehost.net/peacechurch
Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post tells us that George Bush, who had hoped to spend the summer ramming Social Security firecrackers down our throats, is being forced by his plummeting poll numbers to take a second look at shoring up the lies about how peachy keen everything is in Iraq.  Not that Bush ever looks at poll numbers, or spends any time worrying about what the street rabble thinks -- but with elections coming up, some Frights (Friends on the Right) are beginning to nervously gnaw their fingernails...  

One of the more reasonable ones is South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham, who laments that the war is lasting much longer and isn't nearly as much whizbang fun as Bush promised. Graham says more people are dying than originally thought, and the insurgency against the illegal occupation isn't following Bush's democracy-and-freedom-spreading plan. Although Graham didn't say how many dead "people" were acceptable to him at the outset of this war we were lied into, or whether they are our people or their people, he did suggest if Bush has either a victory plan or an exit plan, maybe he should share them with the rest of us.

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