Back on our organic commune in western Massachusetts we often laughed about a fabled farmer who owned a manure spreader.  This fabulous device flung cow, horse and chicken droppings high and far onto corn and hay fields. 

We had one.  It worked great.

Allegedly this mythical farmer once used his to render the home of a corrupt Selectman terminally fragrant.  It was a great story. 

So amidst our endless disputes with local officials and polluters, we fantasized about arming our own crap flinger for a few choice passes at town hall or the local utility office. 

But there was nothing explicit in the law books about airborne poop, and we weren't sure Gandhi would have approved.  So despite the great laughs, we never actually did it.

No such qualms plague Dick Cheney or Karl Rove, disciples of the ultimate filthy trickster, Dick Nixon.

The presidential election of 2004 is all about fear.

     That is the simple yet complete truth. November 2, 2004 is a referendum on fear: should we, a nation of 260 million people, make all of our major political and life decisions based on the actions of nineteen monsters who hijacked four airplanes on a beautiful morning in September three years ago and murdered 3000 of our fellow citizens? Are we obliged due to our natural and understandable terror on that horrible day to eliminate civil liberties and common decencies for which Americans have fought and died since our country’s inception?

     When the citizens of the United States step into their voting booths, they should understand that the choice is not between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. The ballots should read Fear and Freedom.

     Anyone who votes for Bush, regardless of their stated reasons, is casting a ballot for fear; for making decisions based upon what scares them, or what they are told by the Bush administration should scare them.

     Kerry is the choice of those who would live and decide without fear, because only those who do so can be truly free.

When the Iraqi Survey Group released its long awaited report last week that said Iraq eliminated its weapons programs in the 1990s, President George W. Bush quickly changed his stance on reasons he authorized an invasion of Iraq. While he campaigned for a second term in office, Bush justified the war by saying that that Saddam Hussein was manipulating the United Nation's oil-for-food program, siphoning off billions of dollars from the venture that he intended to use to fund a weapons program.

The report on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, prepared by Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein used revenue from the oil-for-food program and "created a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue in the decade before the US-led invasion last year," reports The New York Times.

"Through secret government-to-government trade agreements, Saddam Hussein's government earned more than $7.5 billion," the report says. "At the same

The American Presidential election is always important for the rest of the world. The US is the primary sponsor and maintainer of the present global order and changes in the US can have direct impact in the economic and political structure of the world.

This time the elections are doubly important because of the enormous ideational and ideological differences between the two candidates on how the global order must be structured and serviced.

If Bush Wins

If George W. Bush wins he and his neoconservative ideologues will assume that their departure from traditional American foreign policy positions has been vindicated and they may be tempted to pursue the same course with greater arrogance, recklessness and abandon.

1. Expect more attempts at regime changes, particularly in Iran, Sudan, Syria and perhaps Saudi Arabia. It is possible that the Neocons may turn on Pakistan and its nuclear capabilities to ensure that no Muslim country has the capacity to ever balance/threaten Israel in the near or distant future.

Seems like every group and its hamster has put out some kind of dossier on the last four years. Top Bush Lies. One Hundred Mistakes Bush could admit to. Best scandals. Biggest Bush flip-flops. Iraq. The economy. The environment.

            Corporate pork and payoffs galore. Homeland insecurity. The deficit. On and on it goes.

            But I like to remember the little things, those itty-bitty things that really made it special. Those touches of style. The je ne sais quoi of it all. Like choosing Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to announce his administration would oppose affirmative action in the University of Michigan case, calling it "divisive," "unfair" and "unconstitutional." Classy timing. Of course, Bush (Andover, Yale, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Harvard Business, three failed oil companies rescued by Daddy's friends, set up by Daddy's friends in baseball and given a huge cut for a tiny investment) never experienced affirmative action in his life. Made it all on his own, pulled himself up by his bootstraps -- black people can do it, too.