If you want to get your political juices flowing early this crucial election year, reading George W. Bush vs. The Superpower of Peace by Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis should do the trick.

  The book’s subtitle, How a failed Texas oilman hijacked American democracy and terrorized the world, effectively summarizes this compilation of Columbus Free Press columns by Wasserman and Fitrakis.

  The paperback begins with a cogent compilation of evidence that Bush would have lost both the popular and electoral vote in the 2000 presidential election if it hadn’t been for the pre- and post-election dirty work done by his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, which stopped the recount of votes in the Sunshine state.

  Wasserman and Fitrakis draw on numerous credible sources to document that Bush wasn’t elected president so much as he was coronated king. The product of a royal family whose roots of power were nurtured by the profits of a banking company that allegedly laundered money for Nazi Germany, Bush quickly changed the nation’s course as if by divine right.

Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking a lot about our kids who are in the armed forces serving in Iraq. I’ve received hundreds of letters from our troops in Iraq — and they are telling me something very different from what we are seeing on the evening news.

     What they are saying to me, often eloquently and in heart-wrenching words, is that they were lied to — and this war has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America.

     I’ve written back and spoken on the phone to many of them and I’ve asked a few of them if it would be OK if I posted their letters on my website and they’ve said yes. They do so at great personal risk (as they may face disciplinary measures for exercising their right to free speech). I thank them for their bravery.

     Lance Corporal George Batton of the United States Marine Corps, who returned from Iraq in September (after serving in MP company Alpha), writes the following:

An internal memo has just surfaced suggesting e-vote manufacturer Diebold planned to overcharge the state of Maryland and make voter printouts “prohibitively expensive.” An employee named “Ken” wrote the Jan. 3 letter suggesting the company charge Maryland “out the yin” if legislators insisted on printouts.

  Referring to a University of Maryland study critical of the company’s machines, he added: “[The State of Maryland] already bought the system. At this point they are just closing the barn door. Let’s just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts.”  

He goes on to say “...any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive.”

Diebold, whose primary business has until recently been ATMs and ticket-vending machines (all of which produce paper printouts), made headlines last week when it dropped copyright-infringement suits against Swarthmore students who had published thousands of its internal memos on the Internet.  

A lawsuit by a September 11 victim’s family cited Prescott Bush’s Nazi dealings in court documents as evidence that the Bush family has a history of war profiteering. “Plaintiff believes the facts, circumstances and substantial evidence once presented to a jury will ultimately establish Defendants allowed the ‘911’ attacks to occur to create an International War on Terror (‘IWOT’) for malicious personal agendas, to include, but not limited to war profiteering,” the victim’s family argues. The victim’s family concedes that, “Plaintiff understands this assertion will be a shock to her fellow Americans who are not aware of this fact . . .” For more information on the suit, go to www.scoop.co.nz.

The Glen Echo Presbyterian Church (on Calumet & Glen Echo) is planning its second medical mission to Ft. Liberte in early February. Last year they worked with the First Presbyterian Church of Charleston W. VA to treat 2500 people (approximately 1/4 of the population of Ft. Liberte) over a period of six days.

This year they are planning to increase the length of the mission to two weeks with Glen Echo responsible for the second week. Because of the expanded scope of the mission they need to recruit additional physicians and nurse practitioners. They also need other health care providers (nurses, pharmacists, dental assistants) as well as non-medical types for medication distribution, crowd control, and other duties.

For additional information about the mission to Ft. Liberte, Haiti, contact Jen Lucas at lucas.72@osu.edu.