- - Nader: Catastrophic at Any Speed - -

Since yesterday, every time I even think of the guy, he appears in my head looking like Max Headroom. He must be suckin' on his last canister of Corvair exhaust . . . OK, look . . . I can't be rational about this, so I'll let BuzzFlash tell most of it. Excerpts:


Here's the bottom line reality: if Ralph Nader runs as a Green Party candidate for President or as an Independent candidate (which is apparently a recent consideration of his.), Nader's candidacy will, in large part, be a tool of the RNC Campaign to Re-elect Bush . . .

Now it appears that the anti-ego candidate has either been baptized in the water of political self-importance or is involved in far more sinister motives: a grudge match against the Democratic Party that -- in its intensity -- far exceeds his concern for the future of America under an anti-democracy, repressive, polluting, lying, corrupt, theocratic Republican rule. Nader, of all people, should be daily railing against an illegitimate administration that combines the worst tendencies of a Soviet style police state with a Francisco Franco/Mussolini style of a few inside large corporations fusing themselves with the ruling party to determine the policies and regulations that govern this nation. That's not a radical, extremist statement: that's how radical and extremist the Bush Administration is . . .

Anyone who thinks that Rove and the RNC WON'T be secretively doing everything that they can to support Nader either has a cabbage for a brain or is so blinded by idealism that they have become naïve puppets. Ralph's decision to run, which appears made out of his personal sense of entitlement (despite his spokesperson's standard political hedging), will probably accomplish only one goal: the election of George W. Bush in 2004 . . .

This is a good editorial, and there's a lot more in it. If Nader runs, I'll send him as many shiney Raygun dimes as I can tape to a postcard. The only job he's really qualified for is crash dummy.

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- - Giving at the Office (Big Bucks Style) - -

George Soros writes in this morning's WaPo about why he's throwing million$ into throwing Doubleduh out. Excerpt:


If Americans reject the president's policies at the polls, we can write off the Bush Doctrine as a temporary aberration and resume our rightful place in the world. If we endorse those policies, we shall have to live with the hostility of the world and endure a vicious cycle of escalating violence.

(Thanks to Eric at The Hamster for the tip.)

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- - More Perles of Stupidity and Greed - -

First, read TPM's blurb:


Okay, when can we all just admit that the Rosetta Stone of today's Washington (viz, the defense-intel -money-chase -homeland-security-lobbying mumbo-jumbotron) is the account book of Richard Perle's "Trireme Partners"?

Turns out now that Boeing (themselves now in a bit of military-industrial complex hot water) 'invested' $20 million too.

Then, read the Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece, written prior to the Iraq invasion. Excerpt:


When Perle was asked whether his dealings with Trireme might present the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said that anyone who saw such a conflict would be thinking “maliciously.� But Perle, in crisscrossing between the public and the private sectors, has put himself in a difficult position—one not uncommon to public men. He is credited with being the intellectual force behind a war that not everyone wants and that many suspect, however unfairly, of being driven by American business interests. There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war. In doing so, he has given ammunition not only to the Saudis but to his other ideological opponents as well.

Then, finish the trip with this Forbes/Reuters piece. Excerpt:


Boeing Co. in recent years has committed to invest about $250 million in around 29 venture-capital funds, some of which either employ or are advised by Washington insiders, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday.

The company has committed to invest some $20 million in Trireme Partners, which invests in homeland-security technologies, the paper said. Trimeme's principal is Richard Perle, who until March was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises the defense secretary.

The other big commitment, also $20 million, is to Paladin Capital Group, a Washington firm that runs a homeland security fund, the paper said. R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a member of the Defense Policy Board, is principal at Paladin, the report said.

Get it? Having fun yet? Can you hear me now?

By the way, Paul Krugman is now writing for Pravda. Read this. Excerpt:


The point is that on the matter of taxes, the right had more or less declared its intention to - as [Henry Kissinger] put it - "smash the existing framework," in this case the framework of the American tax system as we know it. Yet the American political and media establishment couldn't believe that [George W. Bush] would really try to achieve that goal.

Endless wars, tax giveaways, budget deficits - the president is playing by a radical new set of rules, while the media and the Democrats give him a free ride

THE SATIRICAL WEEKLY The Onion describes itself as "America's finest news source" - and for the last few years that has been the literal truth. Its mock news story for January 18th, 2001, reported a speech in which President-elect George W. Bush declared, "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

And so it has turned out.



Be at peace.