Bill O'Reilly's dishonest smear campaign against Sheehan removes any credibility that he might have had before. O'Reilly is free to disagree with what Sheehan is doing, but lying about her to try to intimidate her is unforgivable. She lost her son in the war, and Bill O'Reilly is mocking her loss. In the process, he is mocking the loss of every war mother.

Email Fox "News" at:
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com

The most important and compelling news story to come along in some time is Cindy Sheehan's attempt to confront Bush face-to-face. The military families who have joined her along with other supporters make it even more important.

This story deserves to be on the front page of every New York Newspaper. Contact some NYC papers and let them know what they should do.

AM New York
pcatapano@am-ny.com, jennifer.martin@am-ny.com

metro
mark.moore@metro.us

New York Daily News
news@edit.nydailynews.com

Michael Bloomberg is often described as a “nominal Republican” by corporate media trying to convince those of us who live here to vote for him. Bloomberg often tries to cultivate a moderate image, but his actions tell otherwise. The Mayor’s campaign’s use of the Republican code-phrase “flip-flopper” in recent campaign propaganda shows that the GOP has a monolithic propaganda machine, one which Bloomberg fully endorses and participates in.

Bloomberg may occasionally serve up pro-gay rhetoric, but he has been viciously homophobic in his actions. He has fought legislation in court that would make the city do business with companies ethical enough to have domestic partnership benefits. Far worse, he first vetoed legislation that prevents school bullies from harassing and assaulting queer youth in the public schools. When the City Council overrode his veto, Bloomberg demonstrated what a fanatical bigot he is by refusing to follow the law. Adding homophobic insult to homophobic injury, Bloomberg still refuses to grant permits for counter-protests for people opposed to the homophobic hate-march masquerading itself as a St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Bloomberg’s budget priorities have been pure Bush. It’s been all about tax breaks for the wealthy and enormous subsidies for corporations. We have seen this with hugely subsidized stadium deals, subsidies that will cut city services and raise fares for people on subways and busses. When a rail link was reestablished between Staten Island and Manhattan, Bloomberg and Pataki chose freight rail over passenger rail, demonstrating their contempt for middle class New Yorkers. Only corporate interests matter to them.

Bloomberg’s response to the London bombings was pure Bush/Rove. When local Democrats turned up the heat on the Bush regime to get more funding for public transport security, Bloomberg set up a distraction with his random and seldom searches of riders’ bags. Everyone knows this has nothing to do with protecting passengers and everything to do with attacking American freedoms, what Bush and Rove want the most. Of course, Bloomberg previously has attacked our constitutional freedoms on multiple occasions, the most famously when he illegally denied permits for anti-GOP protests in Central Park.

Bloomberg is the worst kind of Bush/Rove/Cheney Republican, yet he feels compelled to pretend otherwise to win in NYC. Let’s hope the voters aren’t fooled this time by the tens of millions of propaganda dollars he is spending to deceive people about his actions and intentions.

Blair’s bungling, flailing approach to fighting terrorism in England just shows how incapable he and Bush are of taking productive action to protect their respective nations from terrorist attacks.

Blair still is claiming that there are no links between the London attacks and the war in Iraq. One obvious link is that the occupation and killings in Iraq are infuriating the Muslim world, helping Al Queda recruit terrorists worldwide.

Instead of reevaluating the Iraq war, and its role in aiding and abetting Al Queda, Blair is pushing a shoot-to-kill policy against people who randomly seem suspicious. This isn’t helping protect Britain, but it is alienating Brazilians. Hundreds of Brazilian friends and relatives of the victim have marched and demanded the arrests of the British officers who fired the fatal shots.

Protest Articles:

Scotsman

Los Angeles Times

Terrorists certainly have made it more dangerous to travel to England. But, now there is another danger: police given orders to shoot to kill anyone who they think might be a terrorist. The killing of an innocent Brazilian man is extremely disturbing. All he did was to do something completely normal on a subway system: running to catch a train.

Tony Blair, a rather wimpy man, is rushing to outdo the macho talk of another wimpy man, George W. Bush. In the process, civil liberties and basic safety have been severely compromised. I am unwilling to let terrorists dictate where I travel, but I also am unwilling to be killed because of insane orders of the government of the travel destination. I’m not willing to take a stray bullet because Tony Blair has lost it.

Even if the policy was limited to those who really are terrorists fleeing from the police, it needs to be reconsidered. Dead terrorists provide no information about other terrorists.

Meanwhile, I’m not traveling to England until this policy is revoked.

Will Bush’s Supreme Court nomination of rightist zealot judge John G. Roberts Jr. distract liberals from Rove’s ethical problems? Do liberals have to choose whether to fight Roberts or publicize Rovegate?

I’ve heard and read various versions of these questions the past day or two. This completely underestimates liberals. We can fight the illegitimate regime in more than one area. We can focus on more than one thing at a time.

This gives us an advantage against the dittoheads of the world who can only obsess on one issue during a given time. Here are some links on Roberts:

http://media.pfaw.org/roberts.pdf
http://www.independentjudiciary.com/resources/docs/John_Roberts_Report.pdf
http://www.prochoice.org/policy/courts/nominations/roberts_facts.html

Both of them were involved in revealing the identity of a CIA agent in order to obtain revenge against her conservative Republican husband whose only “offense” was telling the truth about the hokey story that the Bush regime invented about Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium from Niger.

Even worse, these actions of Novak and Rove have undermined the CIA’s efforts to gather intelligence on nuclear proliferation, something of critical importance in the post-911 world. The betrayal of an undercover agent also will make it more difficult for the CIA to hire and retain undercover agents.

Rove’s actions make him unfit to serve in the White House, regardless of the outcome of the criminal investigation against him. Novak’s actions have eliminated any credibility that Novak might have had at one time, and CNN discredits itself by continuing to employ Novak.

Contact Bush and demand that Rove be fired.
president@whitehouse.gov

Contact the Republican National Committee and demand that they publicly insist on Rove’s firing.
info@gop.com

Contact CNN and demand that Novak be fired.
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4a.html?1

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is blaming war opponents for low Army recruitment. There is some interesting text at the end of the bio on his official Senate web site:

"They have four grown children and twelve grandchildren."

As far as I know, none of his progeny are in the military. Sounds like there is an issue for the taking if anyone prominent enough who has a research staff wants to go for it.

Meanwhile, the corporate media are acting as stenographers for the Bush Administration’s claims that the Army met its recruitment goal for June, while conveniently neglecting to mention that this was only the case because the goal had been lowered drastically.

The overwrought corporate media coverage of the death of Wal-Mart clan member John Walton is disturbing if you think about it. Consider how many Wal-Mart employees have died because that company refuses to provide most of its workers with health insurance. Why haven’t the corporate media lavished the same attention of these senseless deaths of people who worked at Wal-Mart?

This is typical of a corporate media that censors news stories that make its advertisers look bad. It also reflects the lack of value the “mainstream” media place on the lives of people who are poor.

We are seeing another parallel between the Bush regime and the Nixon Administration. Just as the Nixon Administration talked about “Vietnamization” and started negotiating with the Vietnamese nationalists, the Bush regime has started the process of a spun surrender.

The Bush regime is training an “Iraqi military” that has no interest in fighting for the occupation. The skills they are receiving will come in handy when the Shiites and Sunnis begin their battle for who will rule in post-occupation Iraq. This reminds history buffs of how the Nixon administration trained Vietnamese who had no interest in defending the puppet regime in South Vietnam.

Now, we have learned that the Bush regime has started secret talks with the rebels. For over a year, it has been no secret that Bush has lost the war. Now, even they are starting to face their failure.

This is a common refrain online these days. Some may think this overly personalizes the politics of Iraq, but I disagree. Iraq is highly personal to the families of US troops killed there. It is just as personal to the thousands of US fighting people maimed in a crusade for Halliburton, Big Oil, and the Religious Right.

The Bush regime tries to do everything it can to hide the fact that our young people are dying in Iraq. They still refuse to let the media photograph the body bags that give testimony to the sacrifices of the dead. GOP shills in the media attack any news outlet that honors our fallen.

The sad reality is that the only conceivable way to get Bush to take the dying seriously is for members of his own family to be on the line in Iraq. Bush treats the dying of US troops as something of little or no consequence. For him, dying in wars is for the little people.