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Arnold Schwarzenegger is an authoritarian serial sex fiend and Rush Limbaugh is a drug-addicted racist, and neither one of them is fit to govern.

And for these two role models of the American right, what goes around, comes around.  

For California voters, there should be only one overriding question about someone's candidacy for governor:  how would she or he handle the job?

But with Arnold, it's not so simple.

For starters, there's no indication he knows anything about running a government.  His one memorable advocacy position has been for the termination of the state's Environmental Protection Agency.  He originally said it duplicated the fine job being done by George W. Bush's national EPA.  But he's since backed off.

Otherwise, Arnold's sworn his love for de-regulating the industries that fund the Republican party. That brave stance is underscored by his Chief Advisor, Pete Wilson.  As governor in 1996, Wilson signed the infamous AB1890 utility deregulation bill that destabilized the state to the tune of $100 billion.  

Coalition Insists that  Windmills Outrank Missiles

   The Vandenberg Action Coalition in cooperation with the Global Network Against Weapons in Space is preparing to demonstrate at the Vandenberg Gate on Saturday, October 11th, at 2:00 pm. This is the first demonstration to demand the conversion of Vandenberg to a center for the improvement and use of sustainable energy technologies.

       October 4-11 is Keep Space for Peace Week: International Days of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space.  Vandenberg is not only the main test site for the  Missile Defense System, it is a major center for directing weapons to their targets around the world  and has the announced goal of the complete domination of space.

   Many billions of taxpayer dollars have not produced a workable system. In fact,  all of the proposed systems are behind schedule and and in trouble. Yet the Bush administration has requested over $9 billion for FY'04 to start building this unproved system.

   China, Russia and other nations feel threatened by the Missile Defense System, which could start a new
NEW YORK CITY -- Are you confused yet? Two weeks ago, President Bush said, "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties." In September 2002, he said, "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam." But Bush also said two weeks ago, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11."

            That helpful clarification came after Vice President Dick Cheney was asked on "Meet the Press" why he thought 70 percent of Americans believe Saddam was behind Sept. 11. "It's not surprising that people make that connection," said the veep. Back in 2001, Cheney had said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Iraq and the Sept. 11 hijackers had coordinated. But most recently he said, "I don't know" if Saddam was connected to Sept. 11.

            On the thoroughly discredited report that the lead hijacker Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001, Cheney said, "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or denying it." In fact, the report has been disavowed by Czech intelligence, and American intelligence found that Atta
I haven't spoken to a progressive, a liberal,  yet who has not told me that he or she loves Kucinich, that Dennis is hands down the first democratic candidate choice. But then I hear the story-- "he doesn't have a chance.." "there's no hope..."

My reply is: "That's what they all said about Dean six months ago."

I can live with Dean. He's a good guy. But I am not ready to give up on Dennis Kucinich. On issue after issue, Kucinich has the right policies, the right answers and perhaps most important, the right history.

He'll take the US out of the World Trade Organization as soon as he's elected. He'll cancel the tax breaks Bush handed over to the wealthy. He'll cancel NAFTA. He'll start a department of peace.

Now the right wingers laugh at the idea of a department of peace. But then there's Maslow's widely cited saying,

"If you all you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail."

Vote for President Bush and Republican Senators and Congressmen if:  

You think $900/month ($10,800/year) is a fair price for a health insurance policy.

*  You believe drug companies should prevent you from buying Canadian drugs at half price.

*   You are a senior citizen and you think you are about to receive all your medication for free because President Bush has passed the “prescription drugs for seniors under Medicare” legislation.

*   You think large tax breaks for CEO’s making over $50 million are good, but your own CEO may have to cut the company budget and eliminate your position.

*   You never work or get paid for overtime so you don’t care about the recent Bush bill that will eliminate overtime pay for 8 million workers. You don’t know any of the 9 million unemployed U.S. and don’t know anyone in Iraq.

*   Your state has a budget deficit of $2 billion but we should spend $600 billion in Iraq.

*   You know Iraq has more oil than any other country in the world, but no one knows where it ends up after it comes out of the ground or who got the money for it.

Remember the hullabaloo about The End of History? There were many of us who scoffed then at its hubris, the sheer arrogance of thinking we were “it.” Now, of course, even the adherents of such triumphalism are back in the trenches, forecasting their own gloom-and-obscene-profit version of Permanent War. It’s as if the Cold War never ended—and just in the nick of time for them, too. This gives the right the opportunity to revive that most heinous of Cold War anachronisms, the Loyal Opposition. Now the LO can be permanently kept toothless by the ever-present threat of the New Cold War (remember: they have actually used these words). Some have even promised World War IV.

This bogey man is considered by the right to be sufficient to cover any manner of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Even the egregiously traitorous act of deliberately revealing the secret identity of an intelligence agent must be beyond scrutiny. But who’s kidding whom? The whole concept of loyalty is perverted, of course, when the war itself is fraudulent, and when those demanding such loyalty are treasonous themselves.
Citing the "clear and present danger" of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington has sounded the alarm on the Republican threat to what remains of democracy in California. By withdrawing her own candidacy to work against the gubernatorial recall, she's done it with class and savvy.

Gone are the days when activists can dismiss a Hollywood macho man as a mere side show. That lesson has been driven home by the "compassionate conservatism" of the "Texas lightweight" now in the White House.

In 2000, the United States was an apparently stable democracy. The government was fiscally sound. The Bill of Rights was still in tact. Eight years of relative peace and prosperity lulled much of the nation, including the left, into complacency. After all, it had removed Nixon and survived Reagan/Bush I, albeit at great cost. But there had been light at the end of the tunnel.

No more. There is no visible life after Bush-Cheney-Rove. The Bill of Rights is shredded. The economy is shot. The ecology is under total attack. From rigged voting machines to manipulated voter rolls to ghastly detention camps and a
Strong critics of U.S. foreign policy often encounter charges of “anti-Americanism.” Even though vast numbers of people in the United States disagree with Washington’s assumptions and military actions, some pundits can’t resist grabbing onto a timeworn handle of pseudo-patriotic demagoguery.

In a typical outburst before the war on Iraq last spring, Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience: “I want to say something about these anti-war demonstrators. No, let’s not mince words, let’s call them what they are -- anti-American demonstrators.”

Weeks later, former Congressman Joe Scarborough, a Republican now rising through the ranks of talking heads, said on MSNBC: “These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass. Isn’t it time to make them stand up and be counted for their views, which could hurt American troop morale?”

Today, in an era when the sun never sets on deployed American troops, the hoary epithet is not only a rhetorical weapon against domestic dissenters or foreign foes. It’s also useful for brandishing
New York City -- The voices of spoken word artists, musicians and former political prisoners resounded over a room packed with people at the Brecht Forum last Saturday night. RECLAIM: (Re)Affirming Our Culture of Resistance, organized by the Justice Not War in the Philippines Campaign, drew over 200 people to an evening that was a fundraiser, party, performance and lesson on the Filipino people's continued struggle for justice.

RECLAIM was conceived to commemorate two dates in recent Philippine history: September 21, 1972, the declaration of martial law under the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos; and September 16, 1991, the ousting of the US military bases. Reinforcing the collective memory of those dates, the evening's lineup included Linda Abad and Ramon Mappala, who gave stirring testimonies of their persecution under the Marcos regime. Later in the evening, Gloria Pacis, the mother of US Marine Stephen Funk, told of her son's courageous effort to speak out against the war in Iraq. The three speakers, together with interwoven stories of youth activists under attack under Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's
The ad in the airline magazine shows a young boy on a swing, the backdrop for an interactive pager being held by a man's hands. "Maybe you don't have to send an e-mail right now," says BellSouth's ad for their interactive paging service. "But isn't it cool that you can?" The ad, with its headline of work@lifespeed, celebrates a world where our jobs engulf our every waking moment.

It's not just our workplaces. Our lives in general seem faster, more complicated, more at the mercy of distant powers and principalities. We have less time for our families, and less room to ask where we want to go as a society and as a planet. The very pace of environmental crises, global economic shifts and the threats of war and terrorism make it harder to address them. If we're to act effectively as engaged citizens, we're going to have to slow down our lives, our culture, and a world that seems to be careening out of control.

People talk of these pressures wherever I go. "I'd like to be more involved in my community," they say, "to take a stand on important issues. "But I

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