Nancy, only have gotten through part of this but it is outstanding and I can hardly wait to read it all. Good shot.

Thanks, Sally.

Great stuff, Nancy! I remember reading in American Astrology magazine at the beginning of the first Gulf War an astrologer (can't remember the woman's name) who said there was going to be some kind of blow-back, some kind of bad unintended consequence from the war although we would win it. She was so right, because the Gulf War syndrome (which we haven't heard much about lately) caused all kinds of illnesses and (although not publicly known) miscarriages and birth defects among Gulf War vets.

In this current war the US is still using depleted uranium shells, so we certainly must expect more of the same for our troops plus continued birth defects, etc. among Iraqi civilians.

When will we learn it is all one world?

nancy,you ROCK!

Excellent, Nancy... excellent. Much here to reread and reflect upon... thank you for your time and energy.

The occupation is indeed a no-win situation, isn't it? For how can one conquer an entire people? Carpet bombing in Fallujah hasn't worked. 'Insurgents' are the people... the Iraqis. They want us (lower case and upper case) out...

"When will we learn it is all one world?"

Barbara - That is the key question. All one world. All one humanity.

Bush wants internation conference on Iraq

http://www.bahraintribune.com/PrintPage.asp

An international conference was Kerry's idea. Another one stolen from him by Bush.

Nancy, excellent and thorough work. Your passion also shines through.

Absolutely stunning! Wow! Yummy! Encore! Brava! You rock!

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1851

Xtreme weather meets Xtreme media bubble

When it comes to weather news, it's been all-hurricane-all-the-time -- and under the pressure of storm after storm, news language has escalated. "Bizarre" and "strange" have been two recent words of choice in describing Florida's weather disasters. Yesterday, I heard a CBS radio announcer complain that "Mother Nature's piling on"; while the "chief meteorologist" for a local Florida TV station recently wrote, "But I think I echo the sentiment of many when I say, ‘Come on, Mother Nature, you are out of control!'"

When "Ivan the Terrible" threatened New Orleans, correspondents there had a field day discussing whether the city might literally disappear beneath the waves -- this was referred to as the "Atlantis scenario." Then there were those dramatic shots of gridlocked highways filled with fleeing refugees -- whether from New Orleans or the Florida Keys; there were the pans of massive post-storm destruction; the close-ups of weeping survivors; the dramatic tales of rescue; the interviews with people who had "lost everything"; the discussions of President Bush's trips to "comfort" the survivors; and above all, the endless shots of correspondents in rain slickers in front of dripping camera lenses trying to keep their balance in the pelting rain and swirling wind, shots which have become the sine qua non of hurricane coverage in recent years.

More...

Wonderful article Nancy, thank you. And you so touch on what is wrong with GWB. He just doesn't seem the type to sacrifice anything of himself, although he has become very good at sacrificing others. Is this because of his lack of any major planetary oppositions natally?

Another good update on Bagdad from Riverbend, if you haven't seen it yet.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Nancy, WORD....

and 2 WORDS

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

COGNITIVE (Kerry) DISSONANCE (B**H)

shylurker.....

You're right about Merriman......I've been noticing a distinct pulling away from the Bush side for several weeks now. (But he still says one of his 3 determinative questions is "Will you raise my taxes?") So he still has a way to go!

When he sees that a greater concern is the people who don't worry about taxes because they have no income, then he'll be thinking clearly. I also sense a certain amount of cya involved, because he's been a bit off the mark lately.

Something seems to have happened to him during his Argentina trip. Maybe he got the beginnings of a new perspective?

Isn't Merriman's big thing that the Stock Market is a barometer of who will win? If it is up, the incumbant, if down, the challenger?

Teg, Merriman is interesting. He was in Europe in the time leading up to Smirky's Iraq adventure and he wrote rather nicely about the Earth/Peace flags that were flying everywhere. Smirky&Co. have done so much damage--wrecking the Constitution, wrecking our relationships with the rest of the world, wrecking the economy, wrecking the treasury, wrecking Iraq and blah-blah-blah--but Merriman continues to look at things in a very queer way. Somehow he thinks that the title "Republican" always equals "good for business." I think he needs to rethink that assumption and expand his horizon to the world and all humans that are upon it. In the case of Smirky&Co. "Repuglican" has meant "good for certain businesses" (you know, Carlyle, Halliburton, etc.). Merriman somehow shoves his conscience out the door and peers myopically at certain parts of the economy which he confuses with the whole thing. It's very frustrating, because I think he probably is a decent enough fellow, but his perspective is most shallow.

Many thanks, Nancy, for yet one more remarkably good, insightful article.

Merriman is shallow. He bases his projections of history and the indicators of the stock market. History won't work this time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/opinion/24herbert.html

BUSH: "My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win." [from his bio, "A Charge To Keep," which was ghost-written by his own personal "Leni Riefenstahl," Karen Hughes. -- Starcats].

"How is it that he ultimately came to see the fiasco in Vietnam so clearly but remains so blind to the frighteningly similar realities of his own war in Iraq? Mr. Bush cannot explain our mission in Iraq and has nothing resembling an exit strategy, and his troops - hobbled by shortages of personnel and by potentially fatal American and Iraqi political considerations - are certainly not fighting to win. . . ."

The Market went down last week, and October and November have Saturn quincunx the US Moon, so something will be weighing on us. The Moon rules US 8th house: death and investments. It is worth noting that when Saturn was exactly conjunct US 8th house Mercury, we had the 1000th soldier killed in Iraq.

http://www.daykeeperjournal.com/feature.shtml

Chiron, Teacher of Heros

Chiron is extremely important now in the heavens, and I want to take a brief look at its current impact on the United States.

Chiron was a teacher who lived in a cave on Mt. Pelion in Greece.

Chiron is the Wounded Healer. Chiron shows in our charts where we have been wounded, where we work on healing, and where we have a talent for healing. Healing means "making whole," and this is Chiron’s work. It does this by disrupting the status quo, often through wounds or illness, which do get our attention. With our regular functioning temporarily suspended, the energies within us can re-align in a new and more whole manner. The word and the function of chiropracty come from Chiron.

More....

Pat C, I don't mean to be flip. But where does it show the wounds we do to others? That is eating away at me. (And, of course, I am speaking of a grievous wound inflicted in our name, whether with our assent or not. Y'know, mundane astrology.)

shylurker,

"Chiron shows in our charts where we have been wounded, where we work on healing, and where we have a talent for healing."

Many thanks, Pat. I'm just trying to figure out what indicates our ability to wound.

The markets most often do badly in October and April in the US because of the Sun and usually at least Mercury in a square to the US Cancer planets. Wall Street came into being on 5/17/1792 at 10:11am New York, NY. Saturn is at the Midheaven at whoops 26 Aries opposing Neptune at another whoops 27 Libra, all being squared by Saturn this October. At best the Market goes through a little dip when the Sun and or Mercury hits those points in October and April.

Then we have Mercury, Venus, Moon and Mars all progressed to Capricorn with Venus squaring delusional Neptune. The economy is on the skids now and the White House may be able to hold it through October, and that is a big MAYBE, but it all becomes pretty messy into the 1st of the year through spring. Many, many economic astrologers are saying get out, Merriman may not be one of them but he isn't the only economic astrologer.

shylurker, our shadow.

shylurker,i think the wounds we do to others fit in with chiron when we reflect and display a conscience. when we are opaque, we fail to reflect and those wounds turn into kharmic retribution (or something like that). it is of interest that after writing oedipus, sophecles opened a temple to chiron where he sought to heal people through dream work. the wounds of oedipus were inflicted by others through abandonment and lies; specifically becasue his parents relied on the delphic oracle's prophecy. opedipus is a great case because he was wounded, tossed into the forest to die, and then ended up wounding others and ultimately himself. no easy answers...

Don't know if anybody has posted this before but here is a new perspective and viewpoint on a Kerry win:

http://www.anastrologersperspective.com/

Many thanks to you Pat C. and Mike. Let me ruminate a while. At this moment, I'm hung up on the great pain "we're" inflicting on Iraq and Haiti. Chiron, apparently, indicates pain and wounds that have to be borne. What indicates the pain and wounds (and subsequent redemption) that "we" can inflict? That's all. (Oh, yeah! Nothing to it!)

I think Maya does a pretty good job of explaining it in the article. Take another look.

I'm also reminded that whatever exists in either the positive or negative, exists equally in it's opposite, for all.

hey, shylurker, how about 'mars' as that pain inflictor (duality of energy: activation for positive behavior and group progress; manic hate and war on the on the other hand.

Pat, I agree with you on this one. It's one of the best with the most clarity I've read of Maya's work.

Amen to George Bush living in a fantasy world! I'm going to tell the coordinated campaign representative in my office to add that to his talking points "haste post haste."

Re: Business's prediliction for Republicans is not, I think, really about the stock market. The stock market, in fact has historically done appreciably better under Democratic presidents. Rather, it's lower taxes (and lax enforcment), fewer regulations, and far more cronyism due to the very lax enforcment of what regulations are left.Can't recall where I saw this recently, but some article about how all great fortunes were built during times of civil unrest and war and basically, an environment where government oversight fails.

The really rich are not going to suffer unduly even if the US market crashes. They are sufficiently diversified in asset classes and geographically to move things around. It's the small investor who gets killed because they don't have enough to diversify adequately. Mutual funds were supposed to ameliorate that, but in truth, they've become just another layer of risk.

Here's another thing we can start worrying about:
the housing market has defied all rationality in staying up way past when it should have burst. But it's Fanny and Freddie that have kept it going. Now that there are rumblings of serious problems with the F twins, look out below!!!

I have a feeling that it would be a good idea for all of us to visit long-lost cousins thrice-removed in Canada from November 3 to January 26.

If Bush gets in, then he'll assume the gloves are off and he doesn't need to answer to anyone, or any country, for anything he wants to do. And multiplying crises will tend to make his decision-making even more impulsive and grandiose. I'm afraid the sky would be the limit. But I also think a few Republican senators might get their act together and apply just a few brakes and warnings. (I'm thinking Lugar and Hagel and such). Maybe McCain. Probably futile.

If Kerry is elected, Bush will have almost 3 months to do unthinkable damage. And talk about sleeper cells. The Bushies will be doing every devious thing Karl Rove's evil little mind can come up with to solidify lines of power...I'm thinking business-military connections. And there will be a covering of their tracks that will require the entire inventory of the paper-shredding industry.

In the classical style, they will raze the countryside before leaving it to the next government.

Try as I can, I cannot imagine any good thing under any scenario for this country. I think we've gone too far in the direction of destruction, and god knows, Bush has burned all our bridges with utter abandon.

Whoever wins, I'm afraid we're in for a very bad patch.

I'm sorry to be so negative. Perhaps I should try to stop thinking about politics altogether. But this mess has the feel of the period before the French Revolution. (And, guess what, we have even become used to the concept of beheadings again. I now know why Dr. Guillotine's Machine was once considered a step towards merciful execution.)

Dave, Thursday (the 1st debate) John Kerry will be well received by the public. Oh the pundits will try to turn him into the debate "loser" but the positive impression will have been made with the people. GWB "fantasy" is absolutely correct, unfortunately most of the people in this country cannot afford to live "somewhere over the rainbow" like this administration.

Siobhan, Carrie Lever's article is fantastic...her warnings about BinLaden being ignored tells you how deaf dumb and blind people can be....Like JFKennedy going to Dallas after numerous warnings from astrologers.....

Siobhan, I once looked up my name in Gaelic (Judith)...I think it was Siobhan....

It took 4 security codes for me to post this message!

self wounds, wounding others, turning all this on the self again...see the link

Nancy,
I was electrified when I first read what kerry said last Monday.At last he is doing what his Mars Uranus conjunction in his natal chart indicates he ought to be doing.

On another note I was just reading a few days ago where Barbra Watters said that Saturn in the tenth of a war chart indicated defeat for the enemy as it is the fourth house of the enemy.

Well here we have Pluto on the cusp of the tenth opposite Saturn and look at the horror and destruction that has been visited on Iraq becaue of our invasion.

But Saturn is in our fourth in the Iraq war chart, opposite Pluto indicating defeat and devastation of own homeland as well.

Since no bombs have been falling here this would seem to be wrong but the fourth is a lot like the moon and the moon is the mood of the public in mundane astrolgoy and who can deny the devastation this war has brought to the country in terms of the mood of doubt and despair that we have again gone off the rails.

You point out that the IC has now come to the position of Saturn in the war chart is indicative of the time when pain of this war would be felt in the US home land as well as Iraq.

Chennys moon is at 22 Pisces exactly square the war chart Saturn and between now and the inauguration Pluto will square Chennys Moon and be opposite the war Saturn and square US Neptune.

This is indicative to me of great soul pain experienced by Chenny and the people of this country over the brutality and folly off this war.

Chenny may actually realize at this time (early next year) that his bringing on this war is why he is a hugly maligned figure and on his way out of power.

Condeleeza Rice's Chart has, I belive, similar indications which I will save for another comment.

This is about a post from the previous link, from Timothy, who wondered if it might be somehow better for Bush to win; maybe I'm oversimplifying the point, but there's one thing I'd like to note.

Looking ahead, I looked at an ephemeris for the inauguration in 2009--yes, 2009--and it appears that the moon is void of course for January 20, 2009 at noon in Washington, DC.

We already know it's going to be tough for whoever gets elected this time--but personally, I would want the Democrats to win NOW, and not wait for 2008.

Granted, the cosmos ultimately may have its own ideas on what's best for us (hence, the notion of "Thy will, not mine"). But that's why we work with our energy, to send out light and healing thoughts to the world around us. To those who are doing this, let's keep doing it. I think it might be working.

Staying the Course Isn't an Option

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_092704V.shtml

Great article Nancy and lots to think about!!!
Brilliant posts as usual , all.

I just wanted to post my take on the wounded healer---wherever Chiron is in your chart, that's where you feel the "wound"---but you can help others with the same placement because you know what they're going through....am I close here, astrologers?

Blue Earth light to all, and truth!!! Love is the answer.

A view from Georgie Ann Geyer: Despite the chaos ..Bush still "believes". Worth a read:

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=20040921

This pretty well wraps it up....

http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm

Judi Gemimi - Your name in Gaelic would translate to "Siobhan" .. My birthname is similar to yours and I only use "Siobhan" because I am one of a set of triplet girls and we all have such similar names that I wanted to use something different - this goes with my Irish heritage and 'fits' me. For some reason our parents chose almost identical names for us girls - only one letter different in the same name! We all grew up trying to find our separate identities .. very difficult when you are part of a multiple set .. and people tend to group you together and refer to you as "them" or "the triplets". As we grew older we each found other names for ourselves that we used on paper only - all quite different and long names as well. I think few of us would chose the names our parents give us and have often thought that at a certain age you should be able to pick a name that you like and that fits "you". I think that would make us of us that have delt with given names we don't really like to feel more comfortable in our own skin. A name is a big deal as it sums up who you are .. maybe being so closely related to two other identical looking people has made me work that much harder to separate myself from the "trio" if only by name. I have two girls, each adopted from a different country, and they both hate the names we gave them so I guess there may be something to this! One has already picked out a variation of her birth name and uses that, the other is young yet and just complains her name is not "cool" enough!

An Imperial Presidency? A U.S. Senior District Judge speaks out:

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2417005

This o/t, and means nothing, but my Mercury-Saturn conjunction comes up with information like this.

Of the presidents from FDR to GHW Bush, we had two Geminis, two Librans, two Aquarians - and one Taurus, one Virgo and one Capricorn. (I'm excluding Ford since he wasn't elected.) Herbert Hoover and Bill Clinton, both Leos, were bookends.

"George Bush has been living in a fantasy"

Given that Bush's Sun is there with the Republican Party, and the USA, he's been taking along those two for his fantasy ride.

I agree that Mereiman is phony.He is a big shrub backer but of late is backing out a bit.About 4 weeks ago, when he said things like he wanted shru
to win, I openly chided him writing, why is he wishing and hoping for shrub, when per his theory
DOW was DOWN and shrub'll LOSE.The guy erased my commnets. So now I still contradict his shrub support putting different pseudo names and not under Raj!

When I blogged here first, I'd mentioned there had not been back to back 2 term prez in the last more than 100-150 years;this record won't be broken in 2004 as Kerry whacks shrub in November

I am no expert on Chiron and have only really felt its effect on my Chiron return. But I have been wondering about Bush's progressed Mars conjunct his natal Chiron currently and have wondered if it had to do with him inflicting pain through war (Mars). Or conversely, if it meant he is suffering because of his lack of intellect and inablity to express himself (natal Chiron in the 3rd).

Sally - Thanks for posting the Stock Market chart stats. If I read it right, we could see a real meltdown over the coming weeks and months with no real recovey til after May 2006. The Saturn/ Neptune-Jupiter opposition is being hit by Saturn right now. This really continues til June 2005, with waxes and wanes within that cycle. Right now, Saturn is exactly square to the Market's natal Saturn (26Aries23). Interesting, (espcially in light of Merriman's theory) that it is exactly analogous to Bush's Saturn return (26Cancer30). If we can count on this chart, we should watch the Market over the next 10 days for the exact Saturn square to Saturn. The whole month of November progressed Moon will be square to natal Saturn as well (in October prog Moon square to prog Saturn).

So if this chart can be used for prediction, a big if with the Market, then we should see some negative numbers for the Market from now on at least through November and some tough times this winter as well when Saturn squares Market Jupiter.

Siobhan,
your story about the Fundie Family values is almost the identical story I heard while traveing to speak/teach in Michigan. However, this young boy and girl decided to stay friends only and are still close behind he fundies back. Predjudice has many disguises, no? The young people smarter and more open hearted than the grownups.
Yoga aphorism: 'the world is as you see it". GW sees the People as a ten year old, which is really himself projected onto the world. Now we know what age he got stunted , what emotional level he deals with the world. Now to bring everyone else to his level come the Fundies. When they become the debt-ridden, over-weighted, uninspired, uninformed, bio-units that their *actions in the world* are leading them to become, they will be these 10 year old dependant children of the Big Daddy who they will have to rely on to feed and house them.
When/if they wake up from W's fantasy they will be trapped.

Siobhan, your comments really touched me! The truth is, no one really relates, probably, to their birth name, and yet, there they are! (after doing genealogy, I figured out why I had my middle name, that is pretty interesting) But to be a triplet identity is something most of us don't grapple with in our lifetime! I presume you have all the birth data (what a dream for an astrologer to look at)....

I didn't actually change my name, only the spelling....I didn't like Judy...it was the descender f the "y" I didn't like (I'm visual). So I changed it to "i" when I was 15. (I did a lot of changing that year....)

And then, last week or so, I got an email from a woman who said "I have the same name as you, and spelled the same..." And sure enough, same Judi, same last name (our maiden names), probably close in age...but I was born in Hawaii and she in SC. She was a writer for Disney and does write SCIFI novels(I was always a scifi fan) and writes film scripts. She's probably my lost gemini twin....! the writer half to my visual half.

So, while you have the need to separate yourself from your triplet identity, I was always looking for someone "lost" to me....

Again, thanks for the response....and a peek into your life. Speaking of names, my daughter is married to a 2nd gen. Irishman....their kids names are Caitlin Rose and Aidan (which mean's "fiery one" in Gaelic...he was born 22 years to the very minute (5/18/1981, 8:32 AM after Mount St. Helens erupted.) The name was picked 5 months before he was born.

Judi Gemini, I take it then that your grandchild is now three?

Is he particularly interested in mountains or volcanoes? There may be a karmic link if he is.

Fantastic article Nancy!

Thanks Siobhan!

From your link -

"On a side note, the vote looks fixed on some level. There is a lot of push from behind-the-scenes to control the elections. There is an enormous push to update from the imfamous chad ballots. There is on-line voting. The on-line voting programs were created by a private firm. There are some very powerful forces involved, perhaps even allies. There will be some problems."

Then a link from Drudge today ..

Carter fears Florida vote trouble

"
Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3693354.stm

Carol....re my grandson Aidan...he is 16 months old (May 18, 2003, 8:32 am pdt)...but he CLIMBS everywhere...and falls off of everything. Probably not unusual for a little boy....(my granddaughter is 3...May 24, 2001)

Almost everyone who has heard that story wonders....was he THERE on Mt. St. Helens when it blew? I know there was a vulcanologist up there transmitting pictures of the explosion, but he died first(don't know if he was ever found...I think about 54 or 55 people died.)

Well....if Aidan becomes a vulcanologist, perhaps it will be an indication....

Nancy, once again I reread your article....and I am now a little more understanding of the energies going on. And I looked at my relocation chart which Rob Couteau did, and realized that my Uranus runs right up the Arabian Peninsula...Uranus is important in my chart. Sort of makes me wonder if that awareness is what had me so ill in the bombings in the first Gulf War....(I worked at getting my "open lines" closed down because of it!) But your article packs a lot of information into a very comprehensive package. And the 29 deg. Pisces....I had never thought of that degree as being the end of an enormous cycle....but it is true, and very troubling in these charts symbolically. No wonder Pisces is ruled by Neptunian energy, "off worlds"....

Election news...voting machines. This has been the single biggest concern for me over the last almost 4 years....

Not that the Democratic machine of days gone by didn't vote dead people, but this is beyond that pale....and Palast says, its gonna happen, that the fix IS in. I knew that when I heard the Ohio guy who owns the Diebold company say he was going to deliver the state to Bush.

And does ANYONE here remember what brother Jeb said when the media announced for Gore in that infamously wrong pronouncement in 2000? It got reported almost immediately, but then scrubbed...Jeb said something like NO...THAT CAN'T BE....WE HAVE THIS ALL TAKEN CARE OF (paraphrazing, but can't find the reported verbatim sentence.) I believe Jeb and Dubja were on an airport landing strip when he said it....I remember the picture of Jeb on his cell phone (calling Kathryn Harris most likely)...

When will this country/citizens of the country wake up and not take it on the chin again nor anymore? I can't believe this; even a III rate country won't take this garbage from shrub(p-res)
nor from that equally corrupt jeb(corruption runs amok in this shrubs for 3 or more generations). Crooked jeb is on to more scam and sham for this
Nov. per above site and can't understand why citizens here don't REVOLT! I can't even understand how these worst crooks like shrub,shrub
sr,jeb all hold offices governing the country, state etc. in a supposedly SUPER power? These jerks will put in jail for life in any other III
world country!

Hi Judi - loved your info about your name and your "Gemini twin" .. what a fun thing that was to find somebody with your identical name/spelling! My sisters and I are named Joan,Jean,Jane. Gosh, we all hated that!What were our parents thinking??! We are all scorpio - no exact birth time info as we were adopted so difficult for an astrologer to do charts I would think. We also never did get along and even now barely see each other. We do, however, share a psychic bond of some sort and "feel" each other's pain and thoughts even though two of us lived overseas at some times during our lives. We have also sent identical gifts to others, picked the same Christmas cards ... we could write a book! It's been "interesting" but not as much fun as some would think ... we are all strong willed and stubborn and crave our individual identity, something our parents were unable to comprehend unfortunately. After years of identical clothes, identical birthday & holiday gifts and always being part of a 'trio' and never seen as a separate person we all ran as far away from each other as we could the first day after high school! Sad to say but it was the first time in my life I felt really "free". I also have a Godchild in England by name of Aidan .. 9 years old now and he lives up to "Fiery" - red hair and all!

Raj,
I used to think these Americans were asleep. I have come to realize they are not asleep, rather they whole heartedly endorse and share in Bush's sick depraved policies. The People are as bloody as the regime they voted for.
The question becomes are there more of us then them? And can we stop their dirty tricks?

Charley Reese on Bush's Comedy Routine....

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040927/index.php

Siobhan...Scorpios....that's WHY! and I have 0 deg. Scorpio rising, so I had plenty of practice with all those things you indicated...but you will get closer as you get older and have your own identies. I have heard of this "sending the same gift" thing....happens a lot with twins. And as Sally said, the veils are thinning...I think we will start to realize our connections in a higher dimension...that will FREAK some folks out, and will confirm what others have always known.

Raj....more financial stuff, please! Your riff on the illegal shenanigans (there's a good Irish term) around the Bushes in FL could put all of them away....one of the Dubja uncles is notoriously crooked....has run scams in FL for years. Gotta wait for some of the senior players to peg out, I think...break the chain....

http://www.bastards.org

For those of you who have been adopted, you may want to check out this site. Some states have never denied adoptees their original birth certificates, and there is a struggle to open the rest of the states up, and a few states have already changed the law.....

18th May 1980

Eruption

The volcano seemed to quieten down during mid May. Saturday,17th May saw only 18 recorded earthquakes in the region, less than half the daily value of the previous days. Sunday morning was very quiet, hardly any seismic activity, and reduced gas eruptions. At about 8.30am a research scientist, David Johnston, was working at an observation station about 8km away from the main crater. He had been monitoring gas emissions and watching the mountain whilst in contact with his base,Vancouver, via a two way radio. He transmitted a short message "Vancouver!,Vancouver!,This is it". Moments later he died as over 4km³ of rock, gas and steam exploded from the northern side of the mountain.

Good article

Bush on the Couch

By Justin Frank

Dr. Frank is the author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (2004). He is a Washington, D.C.–based psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School.

09/13/04 "History News Network" -- If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning, and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I would grow more concerned. If he presented an inflexible worldview characterized by an oversimplified distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, allies and enemies, I would question his ability to grasp reality. And if his actions revealed an unacknowledged – even sadistic – indifference to human suffering, wrapped in pious claims of compassion, I would worry about the safety of the people whose lives he touched.

For the last three years, I have observed with increasing alarm the inconsistencies and denials of such an individual. But he is not one of my patients. He is our President. He wants to remain our President for four more years, and he intends to do so on his own terms. On August 27, the eve of the Republican Convention, Bush said to New York Times reporters Sanger and Bumiller that “he would resist going ‘on the couch’ to rethink decisions.”

Since the Swift Boat controversy hit center stage in mid-August – both the ads and Bush’s refusal to take responsibility for them – we again see his reluctance to examine his conscience. Instead he remains mired in his long-standing pattern of denial and blame. Responsibility is something this president flees at all costs. It is a behavior pattern that began long before Bush became president, governor, or even a college student. It even began before Bush had become an alcoholic (he finally stopped drinking at age forty, with the help of his religion), though his response to criticism is typical of untreated alcoholics.

Bush was the first born child to a family that had long and moneyed traditions on both sides. When he was three and a half his sister Robin was born. It has been said that the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” was written with the first-born child in mind. It seems to capture perfectly the irrevocable trauma felt with the second child is born: Nothing can put the first-born back together again. Of course, first-born offspring find different ways to manage this insult. Some can be suspicious and overly competitive; others can be overtly nice while covertly furious; still others always keep an eye on the second child, making sure he doesn’t get too much. First-born children keep careful track of how much food mother gives to their siblings.

But if the second-born dies, as Robin did when George was seven, then an entirely new and complex dynamic is set in motion. The first-born often has to disown his destructive fantasies and banish them into his unconscious. But such fantasies threaten his mental equilibrium and he has to do something with them. One solution is to project them outward, thereby experiencing people around him as destructive or a source of danger.

By the time Robin died Bush already had a mother who was emotionally elsewhere. Children resent it when the mother is absent, and Bush’s resentment would have grown stronger in the face of his mother’s grief after Robin’s death. If George’s feelings were never addressed – and it is clear from numerous family accounts that the parents didn’t have a funeral and never talked to George about the loss – his natural animosity toward his sister would have remained unresolved; he would have been left with a host of forbidden feelings that were too threatening to acknowledge, only furthering the process of having to disavow these unwanted aspects of himself. He was deprived of the opportunity to learn to mourn, to heal. In that deprivation lays the kernel of what has by now become Bush’s knee-jerk reaction of denying responsibility for anything that goes wrong. He can’t allow it to be his fault.

It is true that blame and denial are arguably as typical of politicians as of alcoholics, though the latter are generally more likely to involve family members in the process. But blame is also a reminder of one’s destructive impulse; the individual who hasn’t resolved his anxieties surrounding that impulse is particularly motivated to avoid confronting those anxieties, which he can accomplish by shifting responsibility to someone else, or denying it outright. Drinkers turn to alcohol to suppress anxiety.

The untreated alcoholic who has simply stopped drinking treats anxiety as an enemy, and with good reason: He is often more challenged by anxiety because he has lost his time-tested means of numbing its sting. He knows that anxiety is a threat to his abstinence – he fears anything that might lead him back to the bottle – but his years of drinking get in the way of learning other methods to manage uncomfortable feelings. Bush manages his anxiety through his inflexible daily routines – the famously short meetings, sacrosanct exercise schedule, daily Bible readings, and limited office hours. All public appearances are controlled and staged – even the ones that appear to be spontaneous. They have to be.

But when routines fail, denial kicks in as the treatment of choice to manage the potential development of internal chaos. The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush’s personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat; when Jay Leno, on the eve of Bush’s DUI revelation (just a week before the 2000 election), asked him if he’d ever done anything he was ashamed of, he replied, “I didn’t” – and proceeded to tell a humiliating story of his brother Marvin urinating in the family steam iron. Fast forward to the Swift Boat ads, taking a brief stop at his denial that he knew Ken Lay (“Kenny who?”) of Enron who was in fact a friend and major contributor to his campaigns; then to his blaming 9-11 for the failing economy when the market actually began to crash after he announced his tax cut plans; then to his inability to admit to any mistake he made after 9-11 (in the April 2004 press conference he couldn’t bring himself to accept even a modicum of responsibility for either the intelligence failures before 9-11 or for the war in Iraq), to his denial in May of knowing Iraqi information source Chalabi despite having invited him to sit just behind the First Lady at his 2004 State of the Union Address. Putting it all together, we see a pattern that I call the KWD – the Kenny Who Defense. He employs it whenever and wherever he can, whenever he feels threatened.

All his disavowed destructiveness coalesces and requires management whenever anybody challenges him. He becomes instantly wary: Questions mobilize his anxiety and invite that exaggerated degree of rigidity he uses for self-protection. It is not a matter of intelligence per se, but a matter of paralysis when confronted with any question that requires thinking. When there is nobody in particular to blame he stumbles anyway, as he did at the Unity Conference on August 6 when asked to discuss the sovereignty of the Native American tribes. Mark Trahant, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, noted that children study city, county, state and federal government but that Indian government is not part of that structure. In noting Bush’s unique experience as governor and president, he asked about Bush’s understanding of sovereignty and how to think about tribal conflicts in the twenty-first century. Bush hesitated, and then said, “Sovereignty means [pause] that you’re a sovereign – that you’ve been given sovereignty and can be viewed as a sovereign entity. Therefore the relationship between Government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”

His relationship to his father makes all the more sense in light of the anxieties I have described. First, his father cast a giant shadow: he was a good student, a fine athlete, a war hero, a successful businessman. One grows up in awe of such a father – and given this particular son’s need already to disown his own feelings of destructiveness, he imbues his father – partly by projecting his own aggression onto the father – as a man of enormous power, making him more of a threat. And young George W. had few of his father’s qualities with which to defend himself. Being a cheerleader and a big fraternity drinker are just not the same thing. This situation can make a son feel rage, frustration, and shame.

One way Bush managed his feelings was through his humor, his sarcasm (not unlike his mother), and his need to be in charge of any undertaking. At times, being in charge meant mocking his father’s power (being stick-ball commissioner while his father had been an All-American first baseman is a good example). One particular power that George Sr. did not express, however, was the important paternal responsibility to help a son separate from his mother. I doubt the success of that endeavor with George Jr., as his father was absent for most of Bush’s childhood. And when he was present, George Sr. was absently reading or distant.

This particular son is driven by the need to retaliate – against his father and against a world full of enemies. He does so in a variety of ways – though the underlying motives are the same. He tells Bob Woodward that he needn’t consult his father before invading Iraq because he consults a stronger higher father; he regularly introduces Vice President Cheney as the greatest vice president in history, without mentioning that his father was VP for eight years; he dismantles international coalitions once valued by his father; he practices what his father called “voodoo economics” by implementing massive tax cuts for the rich, maintaining that deficit spending will revive the economy; and at the Republican Convention in New York, he doesn’t make a place for his own father – an actual ex-president – to speak. Each event taken on its face value is but an incident. When they are linked together they reveal a distinct pattern.

His drive to manage anxiety is paramount. That requires him to shift responsibility whenever possible. He can consciously deny blaming his father for having failed him in his time of greatest need as a child – in helping him both stand up to his mother and to let go of his need to be her cheerleader rescuing her from her unspoken grief. But unconsciously, the blame persists – crippling his ability to think. He remains a cheerleader, not a leader. The inability to take responsibility makes Bush genuinely unable to lead: he can bully others and seem to act decisively, but he retreats from threatened confrontation (he says “bring em on” only when embedded behind the Secret Service thousands of miles away from the battle). His need to remain in control makes him unable to think things through in order to lead from strength. His is a stage-managed strength, something we saw all too clearly during the week of the Republican Convention.

Copyright: History News Network

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Funny you should mention Mt St Helens because it is still actively producing earthquakes; magma moving around not far underground. See graph at
http://www.geophys.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN/HELENS/mshfigs.html

Former President of Spain on C-span right now explaining about terrorism

Yes, someone explain it.

raj, et al.,

Don't you guys remember Sally saying something like the only way Bush will be able to win this election will be to steal it? I think this is the case.

My strong sense is that the tide is turning in Kerry's favor--against all the media's spin, I strongly believe this. This is what my gut is telling me.

Perhaps the articles on this site are reinforcing what I sense is happening, but, hey, you guys are professionals, and you've been on the mark before. What you're saying is making a lot of sense to me. So don't panic now!

And yes--as much as I hate to put it in these terms--I do believe that, at heart, there are more of "us" than "them." The trouble is that our 24-hour media is warping our sense of reality. As Nancy is telling us, GWB most certainly is living in a fantasy world: the problem is, at the moment, most of us are being drawn into it, and we don't know how to get out of it.

Yes, the fix may very well be in, but you know, I'm not convinced of that. If I were, I'd give up now--and I don't want to do that. By November 2, Bush may not have enough votes to steal the election; by then, we'll know for sure.

I've been enjoying reading these posts, and I hope to be lurking a lot more in the next few weeks. Just please remember, this thing ain't over yet. PLEASE don't give up. There's too much at stake here--namely, our rights. And our voice. Please don't let them squelch it.

I'm sure a lot of you know Mogambo.....I'm very sure Raj is familiar with him, but for those who don't, and enjoy reading about the economy with a humorous slant, try:
http://dailyreckoning.com/home.cfm?loc=/body_headline.cfm&qs=id=4127

Morgana,

Thank goodness... someone I totally agree with...

"I used to think these Americans were asleep. I have come to realize they are not asleep, rather they whole heartedly endorse and share in Bush's sick depraved policies. The People are as bloody as the regime they voted for.
The question becomes are there more of us then them? And can we stop their dirty tricks?"

In answer to the first question, I think there are more of us than them. 2nd ques.? We're trying awfully hard... won't know until November if we can get a 'foot in the door' of our government. If we don't, then the answer has to be 'no' to the second question.

'course, my thought process is an ever-changing one... information in, process, conclusion...

Raj,

I share your amazement... 'the people' at this point seem to me to exhibit the syndrome of the battered spouse... the 'fix' was in long before 2000... the mechanism was probably placed there by Bush Sr. in his Iran-Contra days... we've had our eyes on the Neocons published plans, agenda... some shell game! the real 'plan' was insidious and has manifested... the coup was a fait accompli Inauguration Day 2001. Question now is will the Pirates even 'pretend' to have an election, and if they do, will it be the last? Or, did we have that 1996?

There are two or three nation-states that won't simply sit and allow this empire to increase... one, China, holds our economy in their hands... that chip is allowing their own economy to grow by leaps and bounds... in a couple of years, they will be more than ready to try to stop this perpetual war machine. Meanwhile, Russia is depending on their own nat'l resources to improve their economy. Are we to believe they will simply watch 'the empire' take over their oil fields... and what of India, Pakistan...? West Africa? interesting piece on that here http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=3658

I'm cleaning closets and files and the cobwebs in my head... don't know what the future holds, but I'll be able to travel light, if it comes to that.

check this out:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=905831

GAIA is rokken!

Gina,

I don't think the comments are reflecting that 'we are giving' up... please don't think that ... I continue to visualize, to hope, to send light and blessings... but I was a Girl Scout and those lessons stayed with me. One must be prepared for any eventuality. There are some on the board with a lot of economic savvy and they give advice that in my opinion is worth heeding... same with the political situation. We will know Nov. 2nd whether we have an election or not... it's simply a good idea to be prepared for it not going the way we hope. That doesn't not mean we give up hope... we must never do that... even if we lose, we cannot give up hope! Namaste

Ohio rejects 1000s of voter registration applications due to paper weight.

Mon Sep 27th, 2004 at 19:48:44 GMT

When voter registration applications were maintained for years and used to verify signatures for petitions a requirement that the cards be on 80 lb. stock paper was adopted in Ohio, that law remains on the books. Since the applications are now scanned for preservation, there is no current need to continue that requirement. Today the only time that the heavy weight paper becomes an issue is when the new voter uses the application as a postcard. If heavy paper isn't used for postcards the machinery jams at the Post Office.

In the final days before the registration deadline Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State, has ordered the local election boards to send out new applications to applicants who have submitted registrations on the wrong paper. The ostensible reason for this order is to insure that the applications can make it through the postal system without being damaged. The Secretary didn't point to any examples of voters who were stupid enough to mail regular weight paper as a postcard, nor did he cite examples of complaints from the Postal Service that this has been a problem. Never mind also that the applications he wants thrown out have already been delivered to the election boards safely.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/27/112229/106

I've always said Kerry would not win, Bush will lose. Iraq and the Economy are going to whack him over the next 4 weeks at the same time all the Libra planets start to Trine Kerry and Edwards charts. Trines mean benefits without working for them. Suddenly Kerry/Edwards will look good to all those people who feel uncomfortable with Bush. It's questionable if what we do or say shifts things or if it's "energy" that shifts. No doubt Kerry/Edwards and everyone working on their behalf across the country have to keep pushing during the bad times so they are in a position during the good times to take advantage of the shift. That's what I believe is about to happen. Like a see-saw Bush up Kerry down, now Kerry up Bush down.

It wasn't just Jeb Bush that said Oh No on Nov. 2000, Bush Jr. said "that can't be" when told about Florida. And in spite of the fact that there were other states almost equally close offering to do a recount, the Bush team insisted on Florida being a recount state. They believed the "fix" was in for Florida.

sally, the 'fix' is in for them. they are so screwed and they know it. they should hope they lose. bush should belch at each debate or maybe pop a beer under the podium. iraq is 'hell on earth' -- winston churchill's nightmare geopolitical creation is totally ungovernable. saddam was a sadist but, take away the sadism and graft, and he ruled in a way that was necessary to govern the disparate ethnic groups that comprise a country that was never meant to be.

now we have 'hell on earth' with no friends to help out. *co knows they have fewer options *every day that passes*.

i'm giving and putting time in. i've never done both in a campaign. my daughter is giving 25-30 hours a week to kerry/edwards in No. VA (capitol of the internet). tons of people are registering and there is an anger quotent that will boost the cosmic gift in a big way.

people are already talking about commercial protests after the election: cancelling subscriptions to papers; dropping cable (except for the high speed internet, haha); and a general strike if * steals it again.

watch * in each debate and anticipate the moment he belches or or otherwise blows it. he's a moron but he has enough reptilian brain cells left to know when to scamper.

Jo -
I was just going to post a link to the Daily Kos item about Ohio voter registrations. I'm appalled but not surprised. I think this is only the beginning of what is to come from now until November 2nd - and I fear, beyond. In case anyone was wondering, Blackwell is republican.

I have to agree with the comments above that the tide is slowly turning in Kerry's favor. My gut sense is that the energy behind Kerry is slowly building. I've been hearing from multiple sources that Democratic voter registration is up 300-400% in many areas while Republican registration is only up 20-25%. Whatever this energy is, it feels massive...very Jupiter. It's just a vast amount of raw energy slowly but steadily beginning to move in our direction.

In other news, my campaign underwent a massive shake-up last night. But I think we are going to be in a stronger position from here on out. It's not unlike the shake-up that Kerry periodically goes through. But in any case, I'm about finished with work for today. Michael Moore is in town, and the entire campaign is going to see him. Folks are meeting at the office in a few minutes. I'll let you all know how it goes.

To be sure you’re properly registered, just click here:
http://www.yourvotematters.org/vote/vote_center.cfm?itemid=17759&ms=TRUE001

Theft of the Election 2004 Update: Will the GOP Steal the Election by Bullying Voters? They Did It in 2000, And They've Gotten More Sophisticated in Anti-Democracy Tactics. That's How Rehnquist Got His Start in Arizona, After All.

http://www.progressive.org/oct04/cusac1004.html

"Trines mean benefits without working for them." I'll have some of that, thank you very much, but even if I don't I'm glad Kerry/Edwards has them.

The draft issue is starting to stick, so I hope the info keeps going round, and that Kerry keeps pushing it. This has great potential for helping to cut down that poisonous shrub.

Also, today Kerry spoke to dairy farmers and told them that there are secret plans to do away with their milk subsidy. Another good one!

Nancy, fantatic as usual. I thank you Nancy, Sally and all the others for keeping us sane.

From the Daze on the right side of Astroworld:

Mars within 10 arc minutes of Jupiter at zero degrees Libra at 00-17 GMT today.

The Moon Full at 13-10 tomorrow in Aries, sails on through Pisces today. We are being blasted with waves of 'New Energy'. The week ahead looks really interesting from an astrological standpoint.

and....

ASTEROID FLYBY: Asteroid 4179 Toutatis is flying past Earth this week. The
weirdly tumbling space rock is close enough (4 lunar distances) and bright
enough (9th magnitude) to see through backyard telescopes. For the next
few days it will scoot through the constellation Capricornus where amateur
astronomers worldwide can find it. By Sept. 29th, when Toutatis is
closest to Earth, it will be visible mainly from the southern hemisphere.
Observers there can see it passing not far from the bright star Alpha
Centauri. Follow the links at spaceweather.com to sky maps and detailed
ephemerides.

An article on Toutatis:

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/toutatis.htm

I've had a thought floating around in my head for awhile now --- as meanspirited and evil as Rove is with his dirty tricks, there was no way Kerry and Edwards could have come out slugging earlier than they did... unless they wanted to get clobbered... they tried shouting Kerry's war record and look what happened with the Swifties... if they had said anything about Iraq being a mess before it got to be so gosh darn obvious to even the dullest crayon in the box, Rove/aWol/Cheney would have launched their attack of 'unpatriotic' to speak against the war even earlier than this past week... Tim R. on MTP was hammering away w/ Gen. Awazai (sp) Sunday about that... 'doesn't it hurt the military's efforts in Iraq to have Kerry saying it's a failure?' and of course we had the visiting Iraqi puppet last week shouting what a success the mess is... they have already starting shutting down certain topics as being 'too political for discussion this close to the election' [when the hey is the time to talk about issues... AFTER the election?]

Election season is too long anyway... we need a couple of weeks of really hard slugging by Kerry and Edwards... John-John would whup their you know whats without all the election engineering.

I for one don't believe it's a close race... the polls aren't reflecting alot of things... there have been comments about this on the board... a Dem member of the State legislation said if we 'drag five other people to the polls with us on election day, they can't steal it!

Purple, blue light --- surrounding John Forbes Kerry and John Edwards... Power to the people... Hope is on the way...

Still more on Toutatis:

Indeed, this is the closest pass of Toutatis since the year 1353 and won't be that close again until 2562, according to the latest calculations.   No other asteroid so large is known to have come so close in the past, though accurate tracking of dangerous asteroids, or near earth objects (NEO's) has just recently become a state-of-the-art science reaching to objects so small that they were unnoticed and unreported until recent years; in fact, recent, high-tech astrometrical measurements such as those made nightly at the Arkansas Sky Observatory and some 300 other institutions worldwide still leaves wide margins of error for many objects.
Indeed, this is the closest pass of Toutatis since the year 1353 and won't be that close again until 2562, according to the latest calculations.   No other asteroid so large is known to have come so close in the past, though accurate tracking of dangerous asteroids, or near earth objects (NEO's) has just recently become a state-of-the-art science reaching to objects so small that they were unnoticed and unreported until recent years; in fact, recent, high-tech astrometrical measurements such as those made nightly at the Arkansas Sky Observatory and some 300 other institutions worldwide still leaves wide margins of error for many objects.
.............

My Kerry page:

http://d21c.com/aquariusmoon/Kerry.html

A definition to Toutatis:

http://www.fact-index.com/t/to/toutatis.html

It took quite awhile to find the local broadcast of this weeks' NOW with Bill Moyers on the local PBS station. It's regular timeslot now gone for whatever reasons....finally found it this afternoon. Very good show on the debates and how they evolved to what they are now. We so need to get rid of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Both parties are at fault. I want real people, real leaders, real government.

Some articles back, someone had talked about an inborn homing system they were born with, a knowing of where they were geologically without a map, etc. Well, I wasn't blessed with that, but I do have this inborn ability to know when someone is attempting to manipulate me. Whether it be an imtimate other, a stranger or SCUM. So, if there is a B**h protest where we can shut down/give up cable, I am sooooo there. Can you tell I have trans Uranus in my 3rd house????

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript339_full.html

-snip--
**MOYERS: "Which brings me, David, to a book I read years ago that changed the way I see the world. The title is THE IMAGE and in it the historian Daniel Boorstin argued that so much is being staged and scripted in American life that we are losing touch with reality. He described it as the triumph of pseudo-events — counterfeit happenings, fabrications, replacing what's real with illusions of truth.

I think of Daniel Boorstin every four years on the eve of the presidential debates. These debates have become exactly what he found so deeply troubling — the packaging of politicians and politics to create a phony transcendence that simulates democracy while subverting it." **

On a side note, one has to wonder if this is all happening so that somehow we learn the true meaning of illusion? Teg what you wrote up post, really resonated with me. I'd just come off reading the Carrie Lever article, so all I can say is that my hope is for our system of checks and balances or our Justice system to somehow kick in and work. Also, for any so called fixes, that they'll be challenged, brought out into the open, and into the light. Thanks all for the great links, and Raj, I love to read your posts. You say it so well.

Shade,

Speaking of illusions, I noticed this when checking out Mike's post above:

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre."- Frank Zappa, 1977

And now, Shade, please...
Turn your radar on this and tell me what you see. Was Rathergate 'scripted' --- that is, did Rather 'participate' in a deed that has put 'forged' to anything that now or in the future comes forward re aWol's records? or, was he 'set up'? Neither is good... one says he is part of the 'illusion' the other says he is not the shining example of journalism we have thought him to be, is not capable of fact-checking... 'fell' for a scam...

how 'bout the rest of you? What do you make of this?

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=807

My link at 12:10 am sheds new light on this story, or not?

-----------
'60 Minutes' Yanks Story on Iraq War
By Staff and Wire Reports
Sep 26, 2004, 04:12

CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake.

CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered inappropriate.

The report, with Ed Bradley as the correspondent, has long been in the works. Originally scheduled for June, it was first put off because of new developments, Edwards said.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5328.shtml

Jo, you got me there. I was just going to research the beginning of television and the USA Neptune RX, to see if there is anything there. But at this point, I vote for the "fell for a scam", if it is a scam. Regardless of the documents, GWB's lost year remains lost. And Dubya can go follow that year into oblivion as far as I am concerned, lol. However, that link gives one much to think about.

On a lighter note, I just have to share this one:

WORKING PEOPLE FREQUENTLY ASK RETIRED
PEOPLE WHAT THEY DO TO MAKE THEIR DAYS
INTERESTING.

I WENT TO WAL-MART THE OTHER DAY.
I WAS ONLY IN THERE FOR ABOUT 5
MINUTES. WHEN I CAME OUT THERE WAS A
CITY COP WRITING OUT A PARKING TICKET.

I WENT UP TO HIM AND SAID, "COME ON,
BUDDY, HOW ABOUT GIVING A SENIOR A
BREAK?"

HE IGNORED ME AND CONTINUED WRITING
THE TICKET.

I CALLED HIM A NAME. HE GLARED AT ME AND
STARTED WRITING ANOTHER TICKET FOR
HAVING WORN TIRES. SO I CALLED HIM A
WORSE NAME. HE FINISHED THE SECOND
TICKET AND PUT IT ON THE WINDSHIELD
WITH THE FIRST.

THEN HE STARTED WRITING A THIRD TICKET.
THIS WENT ON FOR ABOUT 20 MINUTES.
THE MORE I ABUSED HIM THE MORE TICKETS
HE WROTE.

I DIDN'T CARE. MY CAR WAS PARKED AROUND
THE CORNER AND THIS ONE HAD A "RE-ELECT
GEORGE W. BUSH" BUMPER STICKER ON IT.

I TRY TO HAVE A LITTLE FUN EACH DAY NOW
THAT I'M RETIRED. IT'S IMPORTANT
AT OUR AGE.

Shade,

I swan... I fell out of the chair laughing with that one... WONDERFUL!

Also, one more thing I thought of re "Rathergate" documents, and that is that most likely when CBS got the docs Mercury was rx. By the time the story aired, Mercury was still in the shadows of its rx period. It left the shadow by entering once more 8 deg Virgo near Sept 17th. From TPM, Josh Marshall was posting news of their being fake by Sept. 15th. Ah, what a retrograde mercury in virgo can bring forth.

Well that Stock Market chart seems to be accurate. The market has been going down since saturn moved into its square to natal Saturn last Thrusday, and today it broke the 10.000 barrier, downward. Saturn keeps tightening over the next 10 days or so. I think Sally is totally right about Iraq and the economy doing Bush in more than people suddenly adoring Kerry.

http://blackcommentator.com/106/106_rather_pf.html

Mr. Palast wrote this piece for publication on September 21. We believe the subsequent CBS News disavowal of one document among an ever-mounting pile of evidence, does not in the least diminish the case against Texas Air National Guard Lt. George Bush – a story of privilege, dishonesty and hypocrisy that Greg Palast has covered for more than five years.
"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions," the aging American journalist told the British television audience.

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship – and self-censorship – which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

"It's an obscene comparison," he said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his neck or career will "bore in on the tough questions."

Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the USA, he smothered his conscience and told his TV audience: "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."

During the war in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite, asked some pretty hard questions about Nixon's handling of the war in Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are dying in Bush wars. But, unlike Cronkite, Dan could not, would not, question George Bush, Top Gun Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum Beloved Leader in the war on terror.

On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you could see Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the game.

"What is going on," he said, "I'm sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn't need to know – limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It's extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I'm sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that."

Dan's words had a poignant personal ring for me. He was speaking on Newsnight, BBC's nightly current affairs program, which broadcasts my own reports. I do not report for BBC, despite its stature, by choice. The truth is, if I want to put a hard, investigative report about the USA on the nightly news, I have to broadcast it in exile, from London. For Americans my broadcasts are stopped at an electronic Berlin wall.

Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in 1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the fix for little George Bush to get out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard.

What is hot news this month in the USA is a five-year-old story to the rest of the world. And you still wouldn't see it in the USA except that Dan Rather, with a 60 Minutes producer, finally got fed up and ready to step out of line. And, as Dan predicted, he stuck out his neck and got it chopped off.

Is Rather's report accurate? Is George W. Bush a war hero or a privileged little Shirker-in-Chief? Today I saw a goofy two page spread in the Washington Post about a typewriter used to write a memo with no significance to the draft-dodge story. What I haven't read about in my own country's media is about two crucial documents supporting the BBC/CBS story. The first is Barnes' signed and sworn affidavit to a Texas Court, from 1999, in which he testifies to the Air Guard fix – which Texas Governor George W. Bush, given the opportunity, declined to challenge.

And there is a second document, from the files of the US Justice Department, again confirming the story of the fix to keep George's white bottom out of Vietnam. That document, shown last year in the BBC television documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," correctly identifies Barnes as the bag man even before his 1999 confession.

At BBC, we also obtained a statement from the man who made the call to the Air Guard general on behalf of Bush at Barnes' request. Want to see the document? I've posted it on my Website.

This is not a story about Dan Rather. The white millionaire celebrity can defend himself without my help. This is really a story about fear, the fear that stops other reporters in the US from following the evidence about this Administration to where it leads. American news guys and news gals, practicing their smiles, adjusting their hairspray levels, bleaching their teeth and performing all the other activities that are at the heart of US TV journalism, will look to the treatment of Dan Rather and say, "Not me, babe." No questions will be asked, as Dan predicted, lest they risk necklacing and their careers as news actors burnt to death.

"Bush Family Fortunes," the one-hour documentary taken from Greg Palast's BBC investigative reports, including the story of George Bush and Texas Air Guard, can be viewed, in part, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm.

I rest my case... Rather 'participated'... documentation was out there for a FULL-FLEDGED case against aWol... Grep Palast had already done it... on the BBC... CBS did a half-@#$ job here, and then apologized!

I rest my case... Rather 'participated'... documentation was out there for a FULL-FLEDGED case against aWol... Grep Palast had already done it... on the BBC... CBS did a half-@#$ job here, and then apologized!

Okay, so we already know aWol was AWOL, and the invasion of Iraq was illegal and the Neocons have pilfered the treasury and the Pirates have given the loot to Halliburton, etc., etc., and the 2000 election was stolen, and Medicare and SS have been stripped, the Constitution has been ripped, and the media is 'owned' by the Repugs... so, where is the ‘Calvary’?

They're not coming, Virginia. A portion of the American people go about their daily fix of seeing who can eat cockroaches for a few thousand $$ or which girl the 'bachelor' will pick... without a care... ready to follow Rove's command to rip Rather from his pedestal or whatever...
They don't watch the BBC, they don't read online blogs... some of them do talk to us... is there any way to reach them? I don't know how, do you? All of us know people like this, many of us have family members who think * is wonderful. The ones I know are lower middle class, their children are fodder for the army *Co is amassing... yet, I can't reach them... do we simply give up on them?

If the right wing elects Bush they deserve
everything that happens to them.

SCROOM!

At least we will be able to live with ourselves.

The unrelenting anger on this board is making me physically ill. I need to step back for several days. Check back with y'all after the Debates!

The way I ws given to understand Chiron is that he was a centaur first...and did some pretty nasty things for a long time. He was wounded and started the journey of becoming a conscious creature, self-reflective and gaining in empathy. It takes about 50 some odd years for Chiron to make a complete revolution to it's original point in a chart. The theory is that by that time we have developed enough consiousness to bridge the gap between Jupiter and Saturn. The grace of Jupiter applied to the laws of Saturn. Who knows... Anyway, if you haven't gotten it in 50 years, you suffer some more unconsciousess and inflict some more pain on others in your unconsciousness acting out. That's what I heard...but then who knows. Shrub doesn't strike me as a very conscious fellow. I've just finished doing the lunar returns for Kerry and the other one for the period right before Nov. 2ns and comparing it to the natal of each. Add the progressed charts, and you have quite a picture. Kerry's looks very promising. The other one's looks like an 8th house melt down...the market?...loss of support (11th house Pluto opposed Uranus, Vertex in the 5th, Chiron and Juno(one manifestation Juno is terrorism) in the 12th opposing Saturn in the 6th. Karma unleashed, or a nasty daily routine and bad health...who knows...And finally that nebulous Neptune in the first which is opposing the natal Pluto. Ruler of the 10th could be Mars, or Pluto. Mars is in the 8th conjunct the moon (market fury or emotional melt down) and Pluto as stated is in the 11th doing it's nasty.
I don't trust my astrological predictions though. It just looks unpleasant for the emporer in the White House.

Beasley, many thanks for sharing your research with us.

Mike, thanks for the Oedipus eye. Nice site (no pun intended).

Jonathan, I hope you will feel better in a little while.

I'm still curious about any indication in the US natal chart that corresponds to our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde split (the Marshall Plan, say, compared to Smirky's Iraq Attack), with the goal of trying to see what we can do collectively to emphasize the positive and put a damper on the negative.

Beasley, many thanks for sharing your research with us.

Mike, thanks for the Oedipus eye. Nice site (no pun intended).

Jonathan, I hope you will feel better in a little while.

I'm still curious about any indication in the US natal chart that corresponds to our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde split (the Marshall Plan, say, compared to Smirky's Iraq Attack), with the goal of trying to see what we can do collectively to emphasize the positive and put a damper on the negative.

How'd I do that? Haven't double-posted in a long, long time. Sorry.

Nice work Beasely. I had not even looked at Juno, but with Juno, Chiron and Moon so tightly conj. progressed Mars on Chiron and the Moon I would place money on your being right about a meltdown.

I remember Nancy (and she is so good at psychological reads) saying something about a meltdown for him in one of her articles. I don't know if she was looking at Juno but I bet she was looking at Moon. My experience for myself and my clients is the first pass of an aspect isn't nearly as bad as the aspect running through all your planets, by the time you reach the very last one you are too tired to deal with the negative energy.

Mr. Bush's progressed Mars just passed a Conjunction to his Chiron in fact it's right on his Chiron now and will soon conj. Moon/Chiron midpoint. I can't help but think he is under a great deal of pressure and it's getting worse for him. I think you and Nancy are right about this one and I do agree there will be a meltdown. Since it happens in his 3rd house of communication I wonder if everyone will be seeing it.

hmmm...'unrelenting anger'. i find this forum very civilized even when people get angry. in fact i'm surprised that there isn't much more anger here given the absurdity of having to endure an election that is even close given the facts. erich fromm wrote a book about nazi germany called 'the insane society' in which he posited that sanity in an insane society was not necessarily a healthy response. i believe that pasivity in an out of control society is not necessarily healthy either. people should be angry enough to work, contribute, voice their poinions, and tear up a few republican yard signs (just kidding about that, just visualize it).

!@#$!% !#$%@! @#$%!@ ah, now i feel better

this is kind of off topic, but I think we all secretly knew it to be true.......

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040927/ap_en_tv/tv_stewart_o_reilly_2

peace and blue light all---and above that truth!!!!

Digby talks about the likelihood of court cases based on Bush v. Gore. It is very depressing. If the election is not resolved right away, I hope it doesn't drag for too long. I don't want to get into Bush's big Juptier transit of mid December.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

nancy, you're scaring me. i'd rather be angry

I'm angry and scared. Passport's being renewed but fall planting is underway. Sheesh, what's a person to do?

Mike....I didn't see any anger either, but Jonathan must be seeing thru a different lens. I can only hope he comes back swinging....waaaap!!!

Carol, thanks for the Mt. St. Helens post...I had the wrong year...it was 1980 indeed, making it a 23 year spread. But I did fly over Mt. St. Helens on May 18 of 1981, the first anniversary...(which is why, probably, Iblanked)....and there was a plane spotter down below us ....a cone was spewing steam, and everyone was worried, although nothing came of it....

However, when I saw the news tonight, they were talking about rumblings from MSH again! Must have tuned into that energy.

Mike, also, and everyone else posting about the "turning"....I was at my daughters house tonight, watching the news...and she asked if I had heard about Bill O'Reilley....he seems to have said he would NOT vote for Bush during a 60 minutes interview? Anyone see that...and: the bagger at the store was talking about how bad Bush was, and the elderly Hindu man who works at my mom's rest home went on and on about how bad Bush is....I mean...I am hearing it now everywhere, where as in the past, I believe people didn't notice and were AFRAID to say it....

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/making-votes-count.html?pagewanted=all

?Making Votes Count

I?n this presidential election year, the Times's editorial page is examining the flaws in the mechanics of our democracy, including the reliability of electronic voting machines, obstacles to voter registration and turnout, and the lack of competitive congressional elections due to partisan drawing of district lines. The project is being led by editorial writer Adam Cohen, who will be traveling throughout the country to research these issues. The following is an archive of editorials from the series:

More...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3693354.stm

Carter fears Florida vote trouble

Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says.

He said a repeat of the irregularities of the much-disputed 2000 election - which gave President George W Bush the narrowest of wins - "seems likely".

Mr Carter, a veteran observer of polls worldwide, also accused Florida's top election official of "bias".

His remarks come ahead of the first TV debate between Mr Bush and John Kerry.

They are expected to discuss the war on Iraq and homeland security during the programme on Thursday.

More...

Nancy, I have a question. If the insurgents overcome the occupation as time goes on, does that appear to mean that the world does not join with a Kerry administration in reconstruction of Iraq? Further, does it appear to mean that there must therefore be a second Bush administration?

Worth the day pass...

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/09/28/susan_mary_alsop/print.html

Not just a socialite, but a gritty survivor
Susan Mary Alsop, who died last month, faced a personal crisis when the KGB tried to smear her influential columnist husband, Joseph. A friend recalls her courage in the face of that ordeal.

More....

http://salon.com/books/int/2004/09/28/wolcott/print.html

The blogs terrorizing Dan Rather and CBS the past couple of weeks represent only a small part of the Internet media devoted to criticizing other media, particularly TV and print journalists. Whether they realize it or not, many of these armchair mediaphiles have been heavily influenced by James Wolcott, whose cultural criticism appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and Esquire before settling in Vanity Fair, where he is the culture critic. Well before all that, he had a memorable stint as TV critic for the Village Voice.

More...

Bill Burkett is going through hell and being systematically destroyed.  Financially, as well as his credibility are ruined.  We set him up a blog at http://www.billburkett.us and a pay pal hoping he can get enough donation to keep him afloat until someone can clear his name. Bushista's set out to destroy him and they truly have.

FDA Told Its Analyst to Censor Data on Antidepressants

Food and Drug Administration medical officer was told by top agency officials to delete material on the risks of antidepressant drugs from records he was submitting to Congress and then to conceal the deletions, according to documents released yesterday at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

A bipartisan House panel said the FDA also repeatedly prevented Andrew D. Mosholder from disclosing his conclusions that the medications increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior among children, potentially delaying the issuance of a public warning

U.S. keeping crash data secret

Federal auto safety officials are backtracking on a pledge to give consumers access to detailed data on which cars and trucks may be linked to deaths, injuries and property damage. The reason: Tire makers have sued to prevent its release.

Auto experts say these data on vehicle deaths, injuries, property damage and what specific parts may have caused the problem would be of great interest to car and truck shoppers, who often make their buying decisions based on a vehicle's safety records and reliability.

Here is that link from the last post which should be clickable.

http://www.billburkett.us/

Jonathan,
If you are lurking out there. I looked over the thread and wondered where the anger could be.
I am reading 'Odd Girl Out' and how girls are expected to be 'nice' all the time while pushing down their real feelings until they explode or are passive-aggressive.
I wish you would tell us where you thought we were so angry so that we can discuss and try and understand where we can all do better.
Otherwise, I'm afraid you've been abducted by Freepers who get so caught up in their ego that any dissention caused them to leave (actually, their leaving thrills me, your leaving does not).
Our society is going through an over-haul and the layers of ALL good and 'be nice' are gonna have to go so that we know how to fend off bullies and it nevers happens again.
Anyway, wishing you well and see you whenever you decide to return.

Peace and blessings to all.

Dear God, we try not to trouble you and we try not to be petty and take pleasure in the trouble of others, but...would we be asking too much to see a PUBLIC meltdown of BUSH. IMHO, I think not. Dear God, think of my wish as a public service, for the good of all.

Just my little prayer for the day.

Amen.

Ditto.

http://tinyurl.com/6fg52
Flood of new voters signing up

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1857
Rebecca Solnit on Thoreau and dissent

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12717-2004Sep10?language=printer
Taliban Head Told U.S. Official Clinton Should Be Ousted

Interesting comparison of GWB to Gen George A Custer over at the DU by Steven Vincent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/09/28_stand.html

I ran his birthdate, Dec 5, 1839 and compared it to GWB's chart. They both have a mutable north node conj Uranus.

"I'm angry and scared. Passport's being renewed but fall planting is underway. Sheesh, what's a person to do?"

Shylurker, I am exactly in this place. Passport's on the way, but I'm wondering, maybe I SHOULD put those bulbs in instead of giving them away....

I didn't get the unrelenting anger thing either, but we hope you feel better, Jonathan.

And Janet, I had the EXACT same thought - it WOULD be so delicious to see him melt down on camera - so... validating.

Feeling the connections here today. I am always late to the posts because of work, but this site just makes me feel less alone in all the pretzel logic that surrounds us.

Have a great day, all you fabulous people!!

: )

I'm having one of my back-and-forth days: at certain moments I feel hopeful, remembering that the stars don't make exceptions for anyone and that even Bush will have to pay the debts he owes to Saturn. I think about the groundswell of anti-Bush sentiment that exists out there, and that Kerry's best astrological moments are waiting for him here in October. On the other hand, maybe it's our country's (and the world's) burden to deal with Bush for a few more years (since I'm certain that he won't complete a second term, even if he is elected in November) and that this particular karma hasn't played itself out yet.

It must be all the planets moving into early Libra, conjuncting my Venus and opposing my Saturn. :)

PS - Nancy, you are a flawless writer. Thank you for this latest treat.

GBS, I agree with your assessment, I have thought on more than one occasion that the way Bush has to pay his karma is another term. As far as the election goes however, he is in big trouble and they know it because they are pulling out all stops to beat Kerry, using a lot of really dirty tricks, like telling people the Dems are going to take away their bibles, please, what an insult to the American mind and yet I know some people will believe that. I also believe he will not serve his second term out.

I do go back to energy, because although we tend to personalize the planets they aren't personal, it's only about energy. Good aspects to our planets can indicate even if we screw up it will turn out ok, difficult aspects can mean we are doing everything right and it falls like a bomb. Kerry/Edwards had really bad aspects in Aug/Sept and now they are in a better position, much better and the energy of the planets should be working their way no matter what the pundits try to tell us. The deeper we go into October, the better the aspects get for Kerry/Edwards.

Also, this isn't just about Kerry/Bush, this is about the US as a whole and what the tipping point might be for the United States and what the long range issues are for us.

" The deeper we go into October, the better the aspects get for Kerry/Edwards."

THANK THE MAKER!

They are discussing debating styles on C-Span. They announcers are trying to be impartial. Should Kerry "dumb-down" his replies, etc?

http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspan_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS

Sally, I am no economist, but I've been reading many articles about the U.S. economy and its vulnerability due to foreign investors in the markets. Many experts predict a large pullout of these investors, especially European ones, if GWB continues in power. Added to that is the ominous warnings about the derivatives markets - Fannie/Freddie, U.S. housing market and the general overextension of credit to already overburdened consumers. I'm not sure that regardless of the election outcome the U.S. economy isn't headed for a meltdown. If dimson prevails, I expect a tightening of consumer credit, along with more punitive credit collection processes that will deeply hurt the average American debtor in all areas of their lives. If the rightwing religious zealots have their way, I actually think they would try to resurrect the debtors prisons of Victorian England here in the U.S. - or make people 'work out' their debts. I'm being somewhat facetious, but there is such a hard edge to these people. They have such a fervor to 'punish' people for their every perceived moral failing.

The Military-Petroleum Complex
The Second Iraq War and the cronies of state capitalism
BY ROBERT BRYCE

Twelve years after the end of the First Iraq War, George H. W. Bush was still reading from the same script.

On March 25, 2003 – five days after the Navy SEALs stormed aboard the Mina al-Bakr oil terminal to start the Second Iraq War – the former president gave a speech at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel in San Antonio. His audience: the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.

Bush Senior was a little peeved. Not at his allies in the oil and chemical industry, of course. The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, a group whose membership includes "virtually all U.S. refiners and petrochemical manufacturers," was a friendly audience. He was angry at those misguided protesters who were staging huge antiwar rallies all over the country. Those demonstrators had gotten under Bush's skin. He was particularly inflamed by the signs that the demonstrators were carrying that said "No war for oil." Bush said he'd seen similar protests and similar signs prior to the First Iraq War. And now that the Second Iraq War was under way, he was still contending that the protesters were mistaken. "This is not about oil," he told the refiners.

At about the same time the elder Bush was delivering that message, U.S. and British troops were in a furious battle with Iraqi tank companies for control of the Rumaila, Majnoon, Qurnah, and Nahr Umr oilfields near Basra. Those four fields contain an estimated 51 billion barrels of oil. As Bush was speaking to the refiners, firefighters from the Kuwait Oil Company were snuffing out the flames at one of the seven oil wells near Basra that had been set aflame by forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. At about the same time, 1,000 troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade were being airlifted into northern Iraq. Their task was to capture the oilfields around Kirkuk. The troops were being backed up by American warplanes, which were beginning to bomb Iraqi strongholds around Kirkuk. The oilfields around Kirkuk hold about 16 billion barrels of oil.

While U.S. troops were invading the oilfields, the younger Bush, from his perch in the White House, refused to even discuss the oil question. Instead, the president's focus was on the evils of Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction program. Bush talked about Saddam's "nucular" weapons and claimed that the Iraqi dictator had huge stashes of VX, sarin, and mustard gas that had to be found and destroyed. And while George W. Bush continued his stream of rhetorical attacks on Iraq, his key aides were looking at Iraq's oil and seeing it as a massive piggy bank. They dreamt of a type of drive-through-pay-for-itself-car-wash type of war.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Pipeline to Zion
On March 27, two days after Bush Senior spoke to the refiners, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified before Congress about the rapidly progressing war. Wolfowitz, one of the leaders of the neoconservative movement, which believes America has a duty to dominate the world, told Congress that the Second Iraq War wouldn't be overly expensive for American taxpayers. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," he told Congress. Asked how much the Second Iraq War would cost, Wolfowitz stuttered out: "And my – a rough recollection – well I'm – the oil revenues of that country could bring between 50- and 100-billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years."

Alas, Wolfowitz hadn't done his homework. Or – and let's hope this wasn't the case – he was telling a stretcher. Even the most optimistic oil experts were projecting that Iraq's oilfields would be hampered for some time to come as a result of a lack of investment in infrastructure. At best, they estimated that Iraq's oilfields were capable of producing revenues of only about $10 billion per year.

But Wolfowitz couldn't trouble himself with learning the facts. Instead, he and his fellow neoconservatives were figuring out how they could divvy up the spoils of war. Within a few days of his outlandish estimates of Iraq's oil wealth, other pro-Israel hawks inside the Pentagon began talking to the Israelis about building a pipeline from the Iraqi oilfields near Kirkuk to the Israeli port of Haifa. A small pipeline had operated along that route in the 1940s, and the neocons apparently believed that it was time to build a pipeline from the heart of Arabia to the heart of the Zionist homeland.

Ensuring a reliable supply of oil to its ally Israel had been one of America's main obligations in the region for nearly three decades. In 1975, Henry Kissinger signed an agreement that requires the U.S. to guarantee the flow of oil to Israel during times of crisis. Kissinger was also a key architect of the plan, pushed by Donald Rumsfeld when he met with Saddam Hussein in 1983, to build a pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

America's oil supply agreement with the Israelis has been renewed every five years. The deal requires the United States to supply oil to Israel even if it causes domestic shortages of oil in America. Although the U.S. has not ever had to make good on the agreement, a pipeline, reasoned the neocons, could help secure Israel's energy needs, and provide another way to ship Iraqi oil to the markets and shipping lanes on the Mediterranean Sea. The pipeline would have huge economic benefits to the Israelis, lowering their oil import bills by as much as 25 percent. The Israelis even began estimating what the pipeline would cost. Unfortunately, a pipeline from Iraq to Israel also would have been a diplomatic disaster. For decades, the Arab oil-producing countries have been objecting to America's ongoing support of the Israelis. And the idea of running a pipeline through Jordan (nearly impossible from a political standpoint) or Syria (absolutely impossible politically) so that the Israelis could have cheap Arab oil, would have been met with outrage by Arab leaders – and a fusillade of terrorists' bombs in their countries.

When news about the pipeline project began surfacing in the British media in April of 2003, James Akins, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the plans laid bare America's real motives. "It just goes to show that it is all about oil, for the United States and its ally," he said.

At the same time that the United States was chatting up the Israelis about a pipeline, American troops had subdued Baghdad. But the soldiers made only token efforts to secure Baghdad's cultural treasures and stop the looting that started as soon as the city fell. The result was horrifying. Government offices were ransacked. Stores were looted. Saddam Hussein's palaces were stripped of furniture and fixtures. The National Library of Iraq, the National Archives, and the central libraries of the Universities of Baghdad and Mosul were all looted and burned. Priceless manuscripts, documents, and books were lost. The National Museum of Antiquities was also looted. Assyrian marble carvings, Babylonian statues, and clay pots thousands of years old were all smashed to bits.

The Oil Ministry building, however, wasn't touched. That was not a coincidence. One of the first sites secured by American troops after they got to Baghdad on April 8 was the Oil Ministry building. For the next few days, as the looting continued all around the city, a detachment of American G.I.s with a half dozen assault vehicles stood guard at the Oil Ministry building. On April 13, 2003, the Washington Post quoted one Iraqi citizen who asked why the looting was allowed in other buildings and not in the Oil Ministry: "Why just the Oil Ministry?" he asked. "Is it because they just want our oil?" Three days later, Agence France Presse reported that some four dozen U.S. tanks were guarding the ministry building and that "sharpshooters are positioned on the roof and in the windows."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Costs of Empire
By early June of 2003, Halliburton's technicians were clambering all over Iraq's oil facilities, assessing the damage and making repairs. One of their first stops was Mina al-Bakr. Halliburton did its job well. In late June 2003, about eight weeks after George W. Bush's May 1 "mission accomplished" declaration aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," the country's black gold began to flow. The pipeline from the oilfields near Kirkuk to the Turkish port at Ceyhan began carrying crude.
But the first big shipments of Iraqi oil didn't begin until June 28, 2003. On that day, the first supertanker to load Iraqi crude in the post-Saddam era began filling up at Mina al-Bakr. The buyer of the oil was Condoleezza Rice's old employer, ChevronTexaco. A few dozen hours later, the tanker, loaded with two million barrels of crude known as Basra Light, left Mina al-Bakr and headed straight for refineries – in the United States. Over the next few months, dozens of other supertankers begin filling their holds with Iraqi oil, and the majority of those tankers headed for the United States.

With U.S. troops guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry in downtown Baghdad and Halliburton employees manning the controls at Mina al-Bakr and other oil facilities, the Bush administration had achieved its goal: the second-largest oil reserves on earth were under the control of the United States. Nearly 30 years after OPEC shut off the flow of oil to America in retaliation for its support of the Israelis, the U.S. had gained a measure of control over Persian Gulf oil supplies. And it had done it behind the barrel of a gun.

Governor Ross Sterling of Texas would have understood the situation perfectly. There were key differences, however, between the American invasion of Iraq and Sterling's 1931 takeover of the oilfields of East Texas. Sterling's operation came cheap: just 1,200 National Guardsmen were needed to control the region's oilfields. The cost of the campaign was less than $30,000 per week (about $357,100 in 2002 dollars). There were no casualties – in fact, not a single person was hurt. The Texas Rangers made only a handful of arrests. And the action was quick: all of the Guardsmen were back home with their families by December of 1932, a mere 16 months after the action began. The only casualty of the campaign occurred several months after the Guardsmen went home. In the summer of 1933, a Texas Ranger, Emmett White, was killed outside of Kilgore in an accident involving an oil truck.

Seventy-two years after Sterling's forces invaded East Texas, another Texas governor was having a far harder time gaining control of a critically important oil-producing area. To win the Second Iraq War, George W. Bush deployed some 140,000 American soldiers and 21,000 soldiers from Britain and other countries to Kuwait and Iraq.

The costs were extraordinary: during the war, an estimated 10,000 Iraqis were killed. Between the start of hostilities in March 2003 and mid-January 2004, more than 500 American GIs were killed and another 9,000 had been injured in battle, hurt in accidents or had become seriously ill. Sabotage, snipers and almost-daily car bombings were testing the will and patience of America's soldiers and their commanders.

The financial costs were mind-numbing. By the end of 2003, the occupation of Iraq was costing American taxpayers about $1 billion per week, and that figure was only part of their financial burden. Rebuilding Iraq and maintaining the peace were costing even more. Those costs were going to be huge, even though none of George W. Bush's stated reasons for going to war – Saddam's "nucular" weapons, his stashes of poison gas, and his links to al-Qaeda and terrorism – had been found. By early 2004, despite months of frantic searching, American investigators had not found any evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even after Saddam Hussein was found on December 14, 2003, and questioned by U.S. interrogators, no weapons of mass destruction were found.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Man From Halliburton
In September of 2003, George W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress to approve an $87 billion spending package to pay for the war and for reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Not surprisingly, a big chunk of that money was going to Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton.
When Bush went to Congress, Halliburton had already been paid about $2 billion for its work in Iraq. The company had 4,500 people on its payroll, though it was hard to tell the Halliburton employees from the U.S. military. Some were working at oil installations like Mina al-Bakr. Others were delivering mail to U.S. troops. Others were cooking meals, doing laundry, and building military bases. Like the soldiers, Halliburton employees were dying. By January 2004, more than a dozen Halliburton workers or subcontractors had been killed while carrying out their duties in Iraq.

For his part, Dick Cheney went on television in September of 2003 to defend his ongoing payments from Halliburton. Cheney insisted that he had "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind." This was incorrect: When Cheney made that statement, he still had options on about 433,000 shares of Halliburton stock. He was also in the second year of a five-year deferred-compensation deal with Halliburton. In 2002, Cheney received deferred compensation payments from Halliburton that totaled $162,392. That sum was on top of the $205,298 in deferred compensation that Cheney received in 2001. As vice president, Cheney's annual salary is $198,600.

Cheney also defended his old employer, saying he had "no idea" why Halliburton got the no-bid oilfield-repair contract. But he did say that there are "few companies out there that have the combination of the very large engineering construction capability and significant oil field services." In other words, after decades of getting closer and closer to the U.S. government and the U.S. military, Halliburton had become the Pentagon's only choice. It could feed troops, build camps, fix pipelines, repair oil wells, and do everything else America's army of occupation needed. In Iraq, Halliburton became example 1A of what the economist James Kenneth Galbraith has called the "military-petroleum complex."

In Iraq, the U.S. government, the military, corporate America, and the oil business became one.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the book Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate by Robert Bryce. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by arrangement with PublicAffairs, New York. All rights reserved

Has anyone seen this?
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040927-112313-4691r.htm

About the upstate NY man who purportedly has threatened dimson? He's apparently gone to ground - disappeared. Ya think this could be an excuse to cancel Thursday night's debate? Maybe he's on his way to Miami...

Well...Mt. St. Helens is acting up, and there was just a 6.something earthquake in Parkfield, CA. The Scott Peterson trial was halted...people here on the Peninsula and especially in San Jose felt it. I usually do, but had no idea until my daughter called and told me. Parkfield is a huge center of earthquake activity.

Another book - cheny Liar by John Nichols;Nichols was interviewed by Pacifica KPFK in Los Angeles
yesterday from 5 to 6 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Crawford-Paper-Kerry.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Tiny Crawford Newspaper Endorses Kerry...

how's that for a smack upside the chops?

Good news about the Italian aid workers...not beheaded after all.

Krugman column ....on debates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Susan

Last week - Wednesday I think - on the BBC 6AM
(EDT) edition Arron Hazelhurst - Financial Reporter reported that foreign investment in the
USA had fallen by 35%. I checked the BBC site
Financial Times, The Economist, and the NYTimes
and there was nary a word. Even on later BBC News
programs that day there was no mention of the story. Something is rotten in Denmark!

This one just made me happy! Crawford Texas for Kerry!

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/edito...

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.

Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.

Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.

President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.

More....

Well, feeling as if I can trust "no one," after reading the article about Mr. Ward that Susan posted, I am sorry to say, but the only thing that popped into my head was that Ashcroft & Co probably all ready have him, perhaps in Gitmo, naked and tied to a slab.

corrected link for the Crawford paper

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm

From a DU thread:

The current USA Today/CNN Poll (conducted by Gallop) has Bush winning 52% to 44%.

But the poll over-samples Republicans by 23% and under-samples Democrats by 21% compared to 2000 voter turnout. If, as in 2000, 91% of Republicans are voting for Bush and 86% of Democrats are voting for their nominee, then we can reduce Bush's total percentage by 21% and increase Kerry's by 18%.

THE RESULTS BALANCED TO 2000 TURNOUT:

Bush: 41.1%
Kerry: 51.9%

Now, dear reader, you can factor in your additional expectations about whether more or fewer Republicans are going to vote for Bush than did in 2000 and whether more or fewer Democrats are going to vote for Kerry than voted for Gore, and you can factor in your expectations of who has been more successful at registering new voters and the results?

How does "Kerry by a landslide" sound?

Moreon that poll's bias:

Thanks to DUer kstewart33 who cites http://www.theleftcoaster.com .

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 24-26
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 758
GOP: 328 (43%)
Dem: 236 (31%)
Ind: 189 (25%)
------

2000 Exit poll results here: http://www.udel.edu/poscir/road/course/exitpollsindex.h...

Pat,

You just made my day!

I just read the Iconoclast's article endorsing Kerry. It's long, but it's well worth the read. Heck, I think we should forward it to everyone we know.

We should also make sure the DNC and the Kerry campaign knows about the endorsement and USES it.

Jonathan, I am still telling people that story you posted about the GOP tourists on the double-decker bus and the driver and Village inhabitants making them take down the Bush/Cheney banner. Everyone loves it! Am amazed at how many people I know who used to live in NYC and remember that time in their lives with such affection.

Re "anger" on this board--yep I personally am angry at Bush et al though my anger tends to be Very Cold and Clammy I guess (Natal Mars conj Natal Saturn in Pisces).

But I think what can be overwhelming to those who can sense it is just the energy on this board. It is sparking all the time, and when a person requires tranquility or detachment for peace of mind, one needs to go away and rake the sand in the Zen garden from time to time. At present I personally am taking at least one non-political day a week for R&R.

But the sparking energy goes on and I am glad, because we need it to be there when we come back. We must attempt to focus this energy for a good outcome.

In my opinion they have to fudge the polls - so the stolen election won't stand out so much. I mean if all the polls showed Kerry ahead by 15 points - then Bush wins - it would make the election look suspicious. If the election matches the polls - then everyone can say - oh yes - just what we expected.

I think the incorrect polls just makes it look like they really are trying to "fix" the election - and it may be quite a conspiracy! The fact that they keep weighting the republican turn-out higher and higher makes it seem like it will be quite a job to steal the election. Maybe they just think "Some votes (pigs) are more equal than other votes (pigs)?"

Apologies to George Orwell.

I think we should get everyone we know to email CNN a letter like the one I have copied below. Just go to
http://www.cnn.com , hit the "contact us" bar on the left and tell them what you think! If we threaten BOYCOTTING THEIR SPONSORS then perhaps they will stop trying to kiss the Repugnantcan's arses...Copy the below letter as closely as you want to, let's hit them where it hurts!

CNN:

I am dismayed by your relentless misleading and biased reporting of the presidential race, obviously in favor of George W. Bush. The bogus Gallup polls which show a Bush "lead" that you repeatedly cite throughout the day on your brodcasts are made up of an unbalanced sampling of voters broken down as follows:
Total Sample: 758
GOP: 328 (43%)
Dem: 236 (31%)
Ind: 189 (25%)

This sampling does not accurately reflect the Amerian electorate and other pollsters like Zogby and Rasmussen show an extremely tight race which is more realistic.

I will no longer be watching CNN and am currently participaing in a boycott of ALL of its sponsors until your coverage stops trying to emulate that of FOX "News".

Lawrence G_______

The polls in 'mainstream' publications are so skewed it's ridiculous! The general public don't get it. However, I read sometime back that the polls would have to show a statistical dead heat in order to hide the vote tampering. As long as the press can keep up the appearance that the race is close - but favoring dimson by a point or two - vote counting fraud can be hidden. There were a few races in the '02 election cycle that the polls showed favoring democrats (especially in democratic strongholds) in the days just prior to the elections, but the actual vote resulted in repubs winning very close races. Again, though, analysis of the vote counts in the traditional democratic precincts all showed repubs winning. And, as for the polls that show dimson leading by 10-12 percentage points, I think those are clearly being used as morale busters. Keep the dems so discouraged that they figure it's all over and no one shows up at the polls.

I have been so bi-polar lately. One day I think - Kerry will get in and he does have some great ideas (even if he doesn't express them so well) and maybe he can really make a difference. They have a company called Changing World Technologies that is turning organic material - like discarded turkey parts into oil. If it catches on, the local dump could be the next oil field. Nasa is pushing solar car technology for their missions - but the tech could also help cars on this planet. Solar panels are getting cheaper and more effective. So many good things out there - if only we had leadership which took advantage of it.

Than on a bad day I think maybe democracy can never work long term. It seems like throughout history the rich have had lavish lifestyles paid for by the poor and suffering. Maybe a single minded family could take several generations to gain power and turn a country into a facist regime without most people even noticing.

I'll be so glad when this election is over! But only if Kerry wins. I'll don't know how I'll deal with a Bush win.

BTW - Has anyone beside me wondered if the current oil crisis if a last ditch effort by the oil companies to make a ton of cash before technology makes oil less profitable?

C-SPAN’S SUBLIMINAL SEDUCTION
HOW WASHINGTON JOURNAL HELPS FIX THE ELECTION
TvNewsLIES.org

There is NO WAY that a majority of the callers could be seen in opposition to any policy supported by the administration.

The result of the phone line arrangements that Washington Journal has provided for their callers is a 3 ½ year blackout of Republicans who do not support the Bush administration. They want us to believe that they do not exist!
* * *
George W. Bush has divided this country. That’s a given. But what is NOT a given is that the political division that exists in this country is straight down the middle. There seems to be a concerted effort by many in the corporate media to suggest that America is now separated into two equal camps: those who support George Bush, and those who oppose him. We are, in short, a nation equally divided in our political views, and equally in support of, or opposed to George W. Bush and company. It sounds good, but is it true?

Ful explanation of C-Span ploy:
http://tvnewslies.org/html/c-span_deception.html

..........

/web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=20040916070023934

 ...the only thing that will reverse the media's slide into terminal mediocrity is putting John Kerry into the White House and hoping like hell that he installs a bulldog as chairman of the FCC. It's going to take a lot of legislation and maybe even prosecution to return the media to a form which will guarantee even minimal levels of fairness and balance. The Fairness Doctrine must be brought back in order to afford a public platform that disseminates more than GOP talking points, and the Justice Department may have to 'Ma Bell' the media conglomerates in order to return media outlets back to local, community-oriented programming. It's going to take a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of subpoenas, maybe some invocation of RICO statutes. There is the distinct possibility that only a part of what needs to be done will be accomplished in John Kerry's first term, and it may even take longer than two terms to get the media's house in order. And that means that there's only one short-term course of action that will make any difference.

Turn it off. Turn it all off.

I seem to be havig trouble with links today. Here is the second link one more time.

http://web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=20040916070023934

Peace and blessings to all?

Teresa B - It's good to see you back! I thought you were treated very badly a few posts back. It's good to see you around again.

Do not be afraid

Hey Suz!

Thanks.

Bush's "New Deal"

http://www.yellowtimes.org/print.php?sid=2085

I was going to write this site off after seeing how you were treated. But, there are enough "good" posters who post interesting links that I keep coming back. I try to ignore the "poison" posters.

I don't think anyone was treated badly. The the me me me stuff is getting tedious. If that culd be avoided, all would be well.

re C-Span....

Brian Lamb worked in the Nixon White House for
years. He is not a moderate. Don't be fooled into
thinking C-Span is 'fair and balanced"...

wv, exactly.

Pat C--"the fairness doctrine must be brought back"--how true, how true!

Many, many people still don't understand that it is gone--gone since Reagan.

Talk about "under the radar."

Brian Lamb is from my hometown. I've met him. Seemed like a jerk.

Pat C

Remember it was Clinton who signed the Bill
giving away the airwaves. We should return to
the 1934 Broadcasting Act...the airwaves belong'
to the People....

Barbara, callin our media Pravda is generous. At leas Pravda admitted it was State news.

Suzieliberal, I've never met him, but I've seen his work. Sigh.

Man I've got to stop trying to type today. Sorry for all the typos today.

wv, right once again.

Later.

Suz...

Not a problem. That's what I am finding so irresistible here. Everyone is free to be her/him self. I guess I don't really perceive a threat.

I think Bush is flipping out.
He sounds frantic on the campaign trail. His voice has taken on a hysterical pitch, which is unusual.
I think he is self-destructing. God knows there's nothing else left for him to destroy but himself.

Going Upriver: the Long War of John Kerry is being released Friday, and I hear that it is beautiful and deeply moving. I think this is perfectly timed.
The Venus conjunct his Jupiter in Leo, especially looks good.

POISON POSTERS?

I don't get it....you mean Joe the troll?

He is the only poison poster on this board.

Schwarzenegger Signs Bill Banning Paperless Voting Systems

By RACHEL KONRAD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28 — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring that all electronic voting machines produce paper records of every ballot cast, beginning in 2006.
Under the bill, signed Monday, voters will not be able to touch or keep the records; instead, election officials will put them in lock boxes in case a recount becomes necessary.

****Looks like Arnold wants to make sure all his votes are counted when he runs for whatever. . . but a little late for this important election****

Bushfatigued, yes, too late for this election. That really is a shame. If only States would take responsibility for the most important right it's citizens have, it would be a different world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28ellsberg.html

Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."

HELLO ALL - ABOUT THE DEBATES...

ON A PREVIOUS THREAD, SOMEONE POSTED EMAIL CONTACT ADDRESSES FOR NETWORKS AND CABLE NEWS.

How about we shake things up and all email the following to the broadcast and cable networks...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This paragraph from Clymer, NY Times, says it all. SO, I'll be watching the debates on C-Span.

NY Times, CLYMER (9/27/04)
"The immediate judgments of television watchers can be changed by analysts citing a moment as a blunder or an overall presentation as strong or weak, commanding or uninformed, human or condescending. Often that impression has not even been conveyed by a seriously developed journalistic case, but by the trivia of television sound bites or reports in newspapers, like Al Gore's sighs or his flawed recollection of just who accompanied him on a trip to a disaster in Texas. Or when George H.W. Bush glanced at his watch, a movement interpreted to prove that he was uncomfortable debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot."

No one is saying it like it is. The reality has to be stated clearly and harshly, or Karl Rove wins this one, and the nation is doomed.

In fact, George W. Bush is the world's leading terrorist. That's a fact that is backed up by this really important editorial by the editor of TvNewsLies.org. Read and send around. Read and weep.

http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/george_w__bush_-_world_s_leadi.html

Reg, this was a good article, I have been trying to find some statistics about how many Iraqi's have died or been maimed since this "war" started. There seems to be little interest in the figures in America however when the war started it was estimated that more than 50 percent of the Iraqi population was under the age of 16, which would put the majority of these deaths as children.

This'll cheer you up.

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i18chumpcheck2.htm

Sally,

Here's a link for Iraqi dead:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

and here's another for American casualties:

http://antiwar.com/casualties/

Pat C., Shylurker ---
Remember 'de plane'?

-------------
Pentagon link to Guinea coup plot

Bush official was warned of trouble brewing in oil-rich state

David Leigh, David Pallister and Jamie Wilson
Monday September 27, 2004
The Guardian

Links have been discovered between senior American military officials and the failed coup plot in Equatorial Guinea that has left Sir Mark Thatcher facing trial in South Africa.
Theresa Whelan, a member of the Bush administration in charge of African affairs at the Pentagon, twice met a London-based businessman, Greg Wales, in Washington before the coup attempt. Mr Wales has been accused of being one of its organisers, but has denied any involvement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/equatorialguinea/story/0,15013,1313672,00.html

Now Jo! Why do you think we aren't hearing about this on CNN, the most respected name in news?? Wouldn't you think that this would be a big story? My stars. I am so perplexed. ;-)

This will interest you.

http://tinyurl.com/62r63

Is 2005 the year the United States pulls its military forces out of Iraq and leaves that country to struggle through a civil war, no matter who wins the presidential election in November?

There are some signs that this may be true.

President Bush can only say "stay the course" in a war that has hardly gone the way he and his principal advisers thought it would go.

Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat nominee, voted for the war, but has said that the way the Bush administration handled the invasion created a crisis and made the United States less secure. Kerry said he would take steps toward bringing U.S. troops home within four years, including getting more help from other nations and providing better training for Iraqi security forces.

We have prosecuted the war and the counter-insurgency war that followed with too few soldiers on the ground and seemingly no strategy for victory. Today, there are three options:

• We double the number of boots on the ground, from today's 150,000 troops to 300,000, and pursue a much more vigorous attack on the foreign and domestic guerrillas. To double the force would require a major buildup in our Army and Marine troop strength, which no one seems prepared to pursue.

• We continue as we are now, holding defensive positions and taking a steady stream of casualties while the insurgents get stronger and bolder.

• We get out.

A suggestion in one of my recent columns that we begin the withdrawal by establishing American enclaves on the Iraq borders has gained some traction and is being discussed by Army planners, we are told.

More...

And by no stretch of the imagination should Porter Goss pop into one's head:

"The plotters then acquired an old former US Air National Guard Boeing, built to a military specification, that was flown over from Kansas with a crew from Florida for a second coup attempt."

(Ouida May is sooooo helpful. So happy she's back.)

Second attempt to post this:

""From the June 4, 2004 Charlotte Sun-Herald: "Punta Gorda [FL] City Councilman Tom Poole, who served with U.S. Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War and spent more than 20 years as a CIA clandestine services officer, said he finds no fault in [Porter] Goss' record of public service or policies."

"23 helicopters have been stolen from there in the last several years, which seems an unprecedented wave of aviation crime. Even more amazing is that all of the helicopters were stolen from just one owner...

"The Sheriff's Department of Charlotte County."

Amazing what can happen in one's own backyard, isn't it? My, my.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/45/8c/200408111516.52448332.html

October Surprise???

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/storyprintfriendly/0,1887,275179,00.html?

Is winning the Presidency a Poisoned Chalice

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3594217&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue

Shylurker,

Ouida May came back just in time for full moon!

How timely!!

Shylurker, wow...that Punta Gorda story...can't wait to pass THAT on to my daughter's inlaws...(one of them a member of that Punta Gorda Sheriffs dept that put 23 helicopters out on "their own recognizance"!!! hahahahah....

Sibel Edmonds better have a good hiding place....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092904I.shtml

The Next President Is Likely to Appoint
    At Least Three Supreme Court Justices
    By John W. Dean
    FindLaw

Supreme Court nominations are among the most influential decisions a President can make: No other choices have longer (or, possibly, larger) impact on the workings of government, and the laws of the land.

    Yet surprisingly little has been said during the 2004 presidential race about this matter. Of course, the issue is still being discussed in the back rooms of the Capitol - but it has not played a public role.

    True, Bush regularly talks about appointing Justices who warm the heart of his political base when campaigning. Yet Kerry has made little mention of his views on the issue - and so the candidates' clash, on this issue, has not made news.

    In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon made his promised appointment of "strict constructionists" to the high Court a central issue of his campaign. Similarly, Ronald Reagan made judicial appointments an issue in 1982 and 1986. And in 2000, George W. Bush did so even more aggressively when he talked of using his nominations overturning the Supreme Court's 6-3, 1973 ruling, in Roe v. Wade, that there is a constitutional right to abortion.

    Why hasn't the matter of the selection of justices been a more openly debated issue in this campaign? In theory, at least, it ought to be - for as I will explain, the next President probably will fill three - or more - vacancies on the Supreme Court.

More...

Two large thumps from CA:

Earthquake hit central CA

Voter's Information Guide is 157 pages.

Picture of President Kerry and his Vice President

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/28/212611/216

Please vote for President --- this poll is really freeped!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6092749/

Ooh, Jo, that poll is being heavily freeped. I was over at DU about 10 mins ago and it wasn't mentioned. They're usually all over this kind of thing.

LENO AXED BY THE RIGHT?
by Nikki Finke, LA Weekly

(snip) " The source insisted that Leno’s stepping down had nothing to do with his recent interview with L.A. Weekly revealing his left-of-center politics. After his opinions received a ton of publicity, he became the target of an e-mail campaign by the right wing, pledging a boycott of the show. So far, Leno’s ratings do not appear to be affected." (more)

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/44/deadline-web2.php

This may be a minor note in the swan song of a fair media....on the other hand, a lot of voters get their 'news' from late night comedians.

(And for some reason it makes me think of the infamous Nazi 'joke courts', where Hitler controlled the laughmeisters of the Reich. For instance, farmers were forbidded to name any livestock animal 'Adolph'.)

Rose, please, post a link (or a source, if still in books and not yet on the internet (thanks, Al)) for this. Very interesting. Muchos gracias!

Breaking - New IBD/Christian Science Monitor Poll Shows Kerry Taking Lead

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

Likely

Kerry 46 Bush 45

nancy, thanks for the reminder on the biased poll data. that's the same type of analysis zogby offered and it makes good sense statistically. what a bunch of bozos the gallup people are. i would remind everybody that they predicted alf landon (alf who?) over roosevelt in '36 and dewey over truman in '48 (both errors due to flawed methodology). yet they continue. i like the xtian science poll. i have always found them to have a great deal of integrity.

shylurker, ouida may, what does she say?

TWO REVIEWS

Michael Moore

Last night, I went to see Michael Moore speak at the local university. He did a fantastic job and really fired up the base. As a campaign manager and as an amateur prophet, I was listening for which messages resonated with the crowd. The two issues which recieved the biggest responses were 1) when he said that the Iraq War was a mistake and 2) when he spoke about womens issues relating to voting rights, women leaders, choice, and the role of women. Haven't we been saying all along on this board that the women are going to decide this election?

Dianna Kerry

For those who don't know her, Dianna is John's sister. She spoke for about ten minutes at a local Kerry supporter's home this afternoon. She's a high school drama teacher, and I thought she did an excellent job conveying Kerry's message. She spoke about rebuilding our nation's alliances and conducting an intelligent war on terrorism. She told the group that Kerry came into politics with a deep conviction regarding accountability and she also told people not to trust the polls, since they did not accurately predict the results in Iowa or New Hampshire. Both my candidate and I really appreciated it that she made this point.

I have had an ongoing discussion with the coordinated campaign rep in my office about the accuracy of the national polling, and we have both arrived at an agreement that the polls are unscientific and that many of them are intentionally biased. In the last two months, we have discovered--always to our astonishment--dozens of reasons why the polling just plain sucks.

You all keep saying that somebody wants it to look like Bush is ahead. I am compelled to agree, but I suspect the reason they want this may be vastly different from what we currently suspect.

Dave, what do you think the reason would be?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1315205,00.html

FBI Tossing Terror Tapes

* Health Insurance Costs Rise Faster Than Wages
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6354776

Hurrah for Oregon! Nader not on ballot!

******I don't know if this ACT action alert has been posted. . . but please go to the site and sign the petition to help stop yet another Republican Dirty Trick attempt to steal the election!*****

Republicans in Ohio Are Scared.

New Democratic voter registrations are up 250% in Ohio. Democrats throughout the "Buckeye State" are prepared to turn out in record numbers to demand change on November 2nd in federal, state and local elections.

But first, Ohio Democrats need your help fighting the latest dirty tricks by the Ohio Secretary of State.

With only 6 days left before the voter registration deadline, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is trying to bar thousands of newly registered voters from the polls.

Stop him today and help protect democracy in Ohio.

Citing an arcane ruling requiring voter registration cards be printed on 80 pound paper stock, Blackwell is threatening to void registrations submitted on any other paper, demanding these registrants re-apply. But there is no time to reapply which could leave thousands of new voters off the rolls.

Tens of thousands of Ohioans have registered online or with registration forms printed in newspapers, copied by friends, community activists, and even state offices. These are valid applications that must be processed immediately.

Blackwell is also trying to impose strict rules on provisional ballots. In 2000, nearly 23,000 provisional ballots were cast in Cuyahoga County alone (the greater Cleveland area). Due to congressional redistricting after the 2000 census and the swell of first-time voters, confusion on Election Day will run high. Provisional ballots must be made available in accordance with the federal Help America Vote Act.

Sign the petition to stop Ken Blackwell's latest dirty tricks.

http://static.act04.org/act/paperstock.htm

Even the Brits recognize that something is
rotten in Florida....still!

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=566688&host=3&dir=70

Operation American Repression

Soldier getting Hell for story that appeared here

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/military_justice/index.html

Barbara, did you say "sparkling energy?"

Sparkling Energy

I come here every day due to the encouraging vibes...sparkling energy indeed....

Error, this software doesn't take except for exact links:
Sparkling Energy

http://d21c.com/aquariusmoon/champagneone.gif

Kerry

http://d21c.com/aquariusmoon/Kerry.html

wv........

Last week when you posted that salon link, I went and read it and sent an email to the soldier who wrote it, expressing support and concern. I got back an email that said: "Thank you for your kind note. Unfortunately I am unable to comment any further as I am being brought up on charges, and possibly court-martialed. Thank you for your support and thoughts."

It scared me silly. Both for him and, (I am ashamed to say since it is such a selfish and cowardly thought in the whole scheme of things), for myself as well. For about 3 days I went around terrified that my email address on his computer might lead to the FBI coming after me.

At this point I remain disgusted, outraged, and (again I am ashamed to say) scared.

I would never have believed that I could ever feel this way in this country. But I do. I confessed my fears to 2 friends, hoping to be reassured. Instead I got empathy and some serious discussion of what should be done if my fears materialised.

What have we come to?

wv..........

You really gave me a Eureka moment with your post this morning.....which I really wish I hadn't read. Funny, on the astrological end of things, I recently reread Rob Hand's explanation of tUranus square nMercury, which, inter alia, warns of impulsive actions. Wish I'd thought of that before impulsively sending that email! I've been stuck with that transit for a while now, and still have a way to go.

Sally, what orb do you use for tUranus square natal inner planets? Mercury in this case?

Think it may be time to pull a Jonathan and retire to bed and pull the covers over my head for the foreseeable future.

I think I feel sick. I know I am angry!

Teg, don't worry. You'll be fine. Keep good thoughts and bring the good things to you. You can even visualize the soldier free and happy.

I'm not being a pollyanna here. You are wonderful, and you'll be fine.

Pat C......

Thank you so much for your post. I badly needed some kindness here. Huggz,

Teg

You're welcome Teg. I'm not just being kind. You are fine, really.

Do take the time to detatch and visualize the soldier happy and free. It will help.

Well, Teg, when I get back from work this afternoon, I will be writing support etc. to the young soldier myself. And I'll be passing the opportunity on to my email list. I think you did exactly right! And I've done similar right along since dyselection 2000! I suspect you don't really think you'll be "safer" with head under the covers & passively letting the bushaholic have its way. ;O)

* If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
by Juan Cole

[bushasadotorturer] said Tue that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists & implied that things are improving in that country.

What wld America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11x that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics wld have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last wk, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade & rocket attacks, machine gun spray, & aerial bombardment in the last wk? That is a number greater than the deaths on 9/11, & if America were Iraq, it wld be an ongoing, wkly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, incl in the capital of Wash DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, & San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the WH & the govt bldgs near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Dept at Foggy Bottom, the WH, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their bldgs, & considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria? ... http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0922-11.htm

Mars with Neptune for me is water thrown on fire so it diminishes the energy. I sometimes get sick or feel low energy with that transit. Wonder if * will bail after the election with some phony (?) illness. Remember Nixon had phlebitis right after his resignation? Always a 'pull the heartstrings' (or chain) of the public.
Always works with the Hallmark Card mentality.

My answer to all freepers trying to pull my chain and getting me to sink down to the level of a Jerry Springer slugfest:
Ker-ry!!! Ker-ry!!! Ker-ry!!!

Joanna......

Thank you too! Of course I don't think I'll be safer hiding! It was an attempt at levity...albeit a pretty lame one! It's my usual defense against injustice when I feel absolutely powerless. It makes me so incredibly angry that this miserable government goes after people who are honest, sincere and caring. Like that soldier (who can't be very young since he's been in military for 20 years.) His column was exceedingly thoughtful and well-written. Nothing like a rant. More like a very rational discussion such as you'd find in a NYT editorial.

I did go a bit further, and have found that it has been many years since such a prosecution has been brought, and that it is unlikely that it would be successful. For which I thank god. But the idea that the military would go so far in repressing thought and opinion gives me chills. So did the deportation of Cat Stevens. I wonder how many people have been silenced with threats from the Bushoholics?

Seems to me you have to have a footprint as large as that of O'Neill, or Kitty Kelley, to dare to go against them.

The whole thing is really REALLY disturbing. I take back everything I said in previous posts about how it may be just as well to have Bush around a bit longer so that all the horrors can come to a head and be excised once and for all. I don't think this country or the world can afford it. Among other things, the prospect of him choosing more idiots for the Supreme Court could be ruinous for us all.

Disturbed in NYC,

Teg

Bush and the Press in an Age of Chaos...

http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0439/schanberg.php

Teg

Not to worry this is still a free country and we
won't let those fascists bastards take it away
from us.
When I was in the service (early 50's) I wrote
a letter to the Army Times - and incredibly started a letters to the Editor column. My rant
then was about the McCarthy hearings and the
attempt to bring Truman before his committee.
The editor wisely left my name off - when I wrote
to complain he printed that letter and again left
my name off.
As FDR once said "There is nothing to fear, but
fear itself"

Al Gore | How to Debate George Bush
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/093004Z.shtml

wv, aint it interesting how the cycles just keep turning?

Pat C

Why aren't the FBI tapes being translated?
Don't Ask. Don't Tell"

Last year the Army discharged 10 Arab speakers
from the Language School in Monterey, CA because
they were gay.

When McArther was asked what he was going to do
about the homosexuals in the service he replied
"Not a g-ddamned thing. If we get rid of them
the whole army will collapse."

Too bad the services don't see it the same way
today. Another of Clinton's failures.

Do you think it was a Clinton failure, or a military failure? I look to the military for that one. Clinton said hands off the gays.

I also blame the right wing who continually hammers anyone they choose to get what they want. They are a disease to freedom.

Run for the hills, it's worse than we thought!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1951&u=/variety/20040928/va_tv_ne/fox_news_beats_all_rivals&printer=1

Questions:

*How can they be so knowledgeable about terra-ist threats, keeping us scared all the time, when they have 120,000+ tapes untranslated?

*They figured all those translators, they've muzzled Sibol Edmunds, they haven't hired many new translators--do you think they really want that stuff translated?

*What in the world is actually on those tapes that they are doing so little about translating?

Pat C

Of course it was Clinton's fault. He should have
told Sam Nunn and the Generals to go to hell.
After all the promises he made, he could have
gone into the White House right after his swearing
in and signed and Executive Order, as Harry Truman
did when he integrated the services in 1947.

Clinton was really a Republican. As is the
Democratic Leadership Council. As Howard Dean put
it "I'm from the Democratic wing of the Democratic
Party"

from my best friend in college (great guy)
------------------------

The bartender robot

A popular bar had a new robotic bartender installed. It could not only
dispense drinks flawlessly, but also like any good bartender --
engage in appropriate conversation.

A man enters the bar, orders a drink. The robot serves him a perfectly
prepared cocktail, then asks him, "What's your IQ?" The man replies, "150."
And the robot proceeds to make conversation about Quantum physics, string
theory, atomic chemistry, etc.

The customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He
decides to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes
back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the drink and asks
him, "What's your IQ?" The man responds, "100." And immediately
the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, baseball,
cheerleaders, etc.

Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one
more test. He goes back in, the robot serves him and asks, "What's your
IQ?" The man replies, "50." And the robot! says, "So, you gonna vote for Bush?"

Has anybody seen astrologer Steve Judd's website lately? He's written several times about something "awesome" happening to or in the U.S.A. Here's what he wrote:
"yesterday’s full moon in Aries is exactly square the US Jupiter, it’s ruling planet. As I’ve stated recently, something big, awesome even, is about to happen in, or to the US. Let’s hope that it’s not violent, although the symbology of Pluto/Mars is hardly placid, and Jupiter hit by an Aries full moon is not quiet either. Critical times for the coming four weeks."
Anybody here picking up on this??

mike...

I Love It!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, I needed that!!!!!!!

WHO SERVED

A case could be made that this will be the last election in which
military service in Vietnam has any political currency. For the
record, it's worth noting who really served among the heavyweights in
each of the major political parties. There are some surprises here.
Be sure to read to the end where the TV pundits who jabber about
military service have their military credentials exposed.

Democrats

* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army
journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat
V Purple Hearts.
* John Edwards: did not serve.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze
Star,Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-1953.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
* Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII, receiving the Bronze Star and
seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze
Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
* Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star
and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam;
Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Bomber pilot, many missions. Silver Star & DFC
during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Avoided service. with student deferments. Entered
draft but received 311.
* Jimmy Carter: Annapolis grad. Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18
Clusters.
* Tom Lantos: Said to have served in Hungarian underground in WWII.
Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.
* Wesley Clark: U.S. Army, 1966-2000, West Point, Vietnam, Purple
Heart, Silver Star. Retired 4-star general.
* John Dingell: WWII vet
* John Conyers: Army 1950-57, Korea

Republicans

* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* House Whiip Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Had "other priorities." Several
deferments, the last for wife's pregnancy.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked
Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did not serve.
* Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Donald Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as aviator and flight
instructor.
* George W. Bush: six-year Nat'l Guard commitment (in four years);
questions about his service remain.
* Ronald Reagan: made war propaganda movies.
* Gerald Ford: Navy, WWII
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple
Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Bob Dole: Army officer WWII.
* Chuck Hagel: two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Duke Cunningham: nominated for Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Silver
Stars, Air Medals, Purple Hearts.
* Jeff Sessions: Army Reserves, 1973-1986
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
* G.H.W. Bush: Pilot in WWII. Shot down by the Japanese.
* Tom Ridge: Bronze Star for Valor in Vietnam.
* Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
* Clarence Thomas: did not serve

Pundits & Preachers

* Sean Hannity: did not serve.
* Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
* Michael Savage: did not serve.
* George Will: did not serve.
* Chris Matthews: did not serve.
* Paul Gigot: did not serve.
* Bill Bennett: did not serve.
* Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
* Bill Kristol: did not serve.
* Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
* Michael Medved: did not serve.

So interesting which party and people wrap themselves in the American
flag...

siobahn, thanks for the heads up!

wv.....

Thanks so much for that list.

I'd like to make a few hundred thousand copies and do an air-drop over every US military installation in the world.

It might open a few eyes.

Siobhan

Please give a link to Steve Judd

Thanx

Mike, Ouida May seems to be speaking in tongues. Since I only speak English and Southern, I can't determine if she's speaking Gaelic (Ireland), French (Quebec), Elfin (New Zealand, where they filmed LOTR), but it's definitely not Texan. With an IC of 3 deg Pisces, and Uranus going direct following the probable "restolection", whaddya think we'll be doing?

wv: Here's the link to Steve Judd:

http://www.stevejudd.co.uk/

Siobhan

Merci mille fois!

Teg, don't worry about the Uranus Square, I don't know the degree of your Mercury so I don't know if Uranus is even squaring it because Uranus is retrograde right now. I would explain what and when you have to deal with Uranus retrograde if I knew the degree. If it will make you feel better the army is going to be slammed with people writing to that young man and they won't get to your email for a long time, if ever.

Siobhan, the new moon has already passed and we are now dealing with the full moon which would be the end of the matter or what was started two weeks ago. Sun/Moon square Jupiter usually means a lot of ego and hot air. We've had that. It could also be lies on a grand scale (perhaps polls?)

Captain Sally, Morgana, Nancy, et al., whatever is this Steve Judd man talking about? Thank you.

wv,
The difference is Democrats serve the people and
cons/repugs only want to be the BIG boss and all
others to serve them; that's why these con bums
must be kicked out of their cushy comfort zones!
Only a people revolt can accomplish that.

Shoiban,
San Andreas fault MOVED yesterday @ 10:15am, richter scale read 6.0. Predictions are NEXT BIG
one could occur in the next couple of weeks in CA

The Myth Of Corporate Accountability
by Howard Dean
      Howard Dean goes where Kerry fears to tread: corporate governance.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/#002079

Whoops Raj, you are right and the other big thing was the Florida Hurricane which happened on that new Moon.But now it's the coming eclipse that's heating up the earthquakes in California and heating up this election and the economy (take a look at oil prices and the effect on the stock market.

HOT news(or cold, if you know already)- TV networks not going to obey shrub rules for debate like NOT televise reactions, catching shrub looking at his watch like sr. in the midst of debate or catch him yarning, smirking, sneering et

Raj...I wasn't sure if it was the San Andreas, but it was (I live very close to the fault itself and since I didn't feel it, I wasn't sure)...my writer friend in the Morro Bay area said it was a roller, a rock and roller, like the Paso Robles one.

To follow up.....Mt. St. Helens lava dome is growing...
Wynn said the movement "sort of suggests that we're getting closer" to an eruption that could hurl rocks and ash a few thousand feet into the air.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/09/29/state1017EDT7543.DTL
He emphasized that the estimates were highly preliminary and inexact because there is only one measuring device on the dome. He estimated scientists will need about 48 hours to interpret the data more clearly.

All of these Mts are connected, from Alaska down to the east bay area (Mt. Diablo)....

Salon exclusive

http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/cbs_wmd/print.html

Cowardly Broadcasting System

Worth the day pass.

Can someone point me to a good interpretive book or site on eclipses? Next month's elipse at 5 Taurus has me a little worried on a personal level.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004
On the Virtues of Changing the Mind

It is depressing for me to see George W. Bush on the stump doing a stand-up comedy routine about John Kerry, parroting the predictable line that Kerry has had more than one opinion about Iraq. Serious news reporters who have gone back over the record find that Bush's charge is without merit, and that Kerry has been consistent on his Iraq position.

The thing that most worries me is not when a politician's thinking evolves on a subject and he changes his mind. It is when a politician refuses even to consider changing his mind. Such inflexibility is almost always a sign of rigidity, which can be catastrophic in the most powerful man in the world.

So Bush vowed not to retreat in Iraq.

Bush has been refusing to retreat, or even to reconsider, for a long time now. At a news conference in the spring, Bush was asked if he had made any errors, and he replied that he could not think of any. Yesterday he said he did not regret his "mission accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, in which he declared the Iraq war over. Bush keeps saying that there are 100,000 fully trained Iraqi security personnel, and seems to think that there are hundreds of UN election workers on the ground in Iraq.

This kind of single-mindedness and refusal to even think about altering course reminds me of Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War.

It is indisputable that the Iraq situation is Fouled Up Beyond Repair, or FUBAR. The number of daily attacks has gone above 80. The Green Zone where the government offices are is taking mortar fire. Little of the country is actually under control, and it goes further out of control at the drop of a hat. Amarah was in full rebellion against the British in late August, forcing them to fire 100,000 rounds of ammunition in a major battle of which most Americans remain completely unaware. The country is witnessing a guerrilla war that is vast in geographical reach, such that the guerrillas struck British troops and National Guardsmen in the far southern city of Basra on Tuesday. Americans have little appreciation of geography, and still less of foreign geography, but let's put it this way. The guerrillas were battling in Fallujah and Basra on the same day. They are over 300 miles apart. This is like being able to strike in both Youngstown, Ohio and Baltimore, Md. on the same day. The guerrilla resistance is not small, or localized, or confined to only 3 provinces.

Many in the CIA have concluded that "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

When you are deep in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Whatever Bush has been doing in Iraq for the past 18 months demonstrably has not worked. He desperately needs a change of mind on these policies. He needs to try something else.

The image of him giggling about Kerry changing his mind on Iraq takes on a chilling aspect when you think of him as Captain Joseph Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez. Hazelwood told the helsman to steer right and then went to bed. The helsman didn't steer far enough right, and plowed into the Bligh Reef and disaster. Part of the reason was that corporate cost cutting had left the ship without radar. If you think about it, in fact, a wrecked oil tanker is a good image of Bush administration Iraq policy.

Bush should stop slapping his thigh and guffawing about that flipflopper Kerry and being to think seriously about changing his mind on some key policies himself. Otherwise, an Iraq as failed state could pose a supreme danger to the United States, the kind of danger that the Bligh Reef posed to the Exxon Valdez.

posted by Juan @ 9/29/2004 01:15:17 AM
http://juancole.com

"The loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.'

Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first
will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin
out and lose popularity.

Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men...

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by
convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" (1910)

September 29, 2004 -- The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents.

The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak.

The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act.

"It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times' legal department.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/29392.htm

Sally....

Thanks to those lovely helpful links on the AW main page, (for which I thank you), I have the following data:

My Mercury is 3 Sag. 50'06"

Allowing a 1 degree orb for the transiting Uranus square, it was operative direct from the end of Feb thru March; Uranus Retrograde has been in orb since mid-Aug, will turn direct about Nov 12, be exact on Dec 30, and remain within the 1 degree orb thru late January, 2005

Here's the clincher........Uranus Retrograde was exactly square my Merc. on Sept 22. Guess what day I sent that wretched email? Sept 22.

Thank you so much for pointing out that many, many others will also put their necks on the line with emails to that poor soldier. It reminds me of the Spartacus legend. When the Romans demanded that Spartacus step forward, every man in his army shouted, "I am Spartacus!" Our strength is surely in our numbers.

It becomes increasingly more clear that we must all be Spartacus if we are to withstand this Orwellian horror that threatens us all.

Thanks Nancy that was moving.
I have a sun at 29' Pisces and have noticed that this degree has pulled out a few other whoppers since Bush took office. It used to be a fairly peaceful uneventful degree but these past few years even my own body is attacking me.

I have to laugh everytime I hear the media express their confusion over the polls.
They can't figure out why it is that the polls show the majority do not like the direction our country is going, do not believe we should have gone into Iraq, do not like our jobs being sent overseas and on and on yet when the presidential polls come up Bush is ahead. Whats going on here , they ask.
Well....
Could it have anything to do with the amount of money this administration puts into the polling?

It's obviously a scam. There is no way that the GOP convention by showing george's one moment of possible leadership because he grabbed a bullhorn and put his arm around a fireman and shed a few crocodile tears for the camera is going to miraculously put his polls above Kerry's.

Morgana and Raj, The battered spouse syndrome?
Thats exactly what I have been detecting especially when I hear someone say
"at least I know what I'm getting with Bush"

The first 2 years I kept getting the feeling that our country was in the car with a drunk driver. I wasn't even aware of Bush's alcoholic problem at that time but I do know what it feels like to be in that car.

judi gemini,
I am definite it was San Andreas which was rocked
Felt as far as 200 miles up north to SFrancisco.
Also bear in mind, San Andreas run from CA to Washinton where St.Helena also showing signs of
erupting, so both activities might be mutually
inclusive.(by the way, my birthday is June 13-GEMI

Teresa, check Starcats tutorial along with google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=astrology,+eclipses&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Shade......

Thanks for the Mark Twain excerpt.

There is some comfort in knowing that we have been here before............

and survived.

Raj, re earthquakes....did you ever hear of the fellow here in the bay area who has been predicting earthquakes for the last 25 years based on animal shelter pickups, lost animal ads in the papers?

His theory is that animals can hear frequency changes, and it disorients them , and they run wild....getting lost and killed by traffic. (I have noticed during full moons an awful lot more wild and domestic animals killed on roads).

He has been very accurate within a window of time, but dissed by scientific community. YET, they've put cockroaches in the trenches because they get agitated before an earthquake, too.

I guess now they have better instruments.

Interesting: 1906 SF earthquake had Uranus at 8 Cap conj. MC; Neptune was at 7 Cancer conj. IC....Mercury squaring at 7 Aries with 15 Aries rising. All the planets were in the eastern half of the chart, at 5:06 AM in SF, 4/18/06 .

83 years, 182 days later, at 5:04 PM, on Oct 17, 1989, the second biggest earthquake happened in the Bay Area since 1906. In that chart, Oct 17, 1989,
all the planets were in the western half of the chart, except the moon in Gemini in the third. Jupiter was in Cancer in the fourth (with Chiron at 16 Cancer). In the 10th were Neptune 9 Cap, Saturn, 8 Cap and Uranus at 1 Cap....and squaring it was...Mercury at 9 Libra! (And the moon in 10 Gemini opposing Venus in 9 Sag) This is just too accurate a line up to be a co-incidence. What do you think?

Teg....I think you should look at my earthquake figures....Mercury seems to play a part in those two big quakes, as strange as it seems to me....!

Raj...I am 16 Gemini!

Raj...not too shure if you meant 13 Gemini or June 13....mine is June 7 (June 8 by GMT)

judi gemini,
That's interesting configuration of planets all in
the eastern half in 1906 and all in western in 1989.How are they placed currently and for the next coule of weeks to next month? May be that wil
indicate-about San Andreas quake OR St.Helena blow up or stealing of election OR Iraq blow up OR
unexpected event?

Don't know if anyone else posted Mark Morford's column....he writes like a cartoonist draws. Enjoy some humor!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/29/notes092904.DTL&nl=fix)
Oh, come on.

I mean, really now. Like anyone worth their even remotely sober intellect didn't have, during that entire, cute little "Memogate" scandal, in their mind's eye a slightly oozing picture of BushCo's master puppeteer and most favoritist overfed pit bull Karl Rove, sitting there all puffed up and wheezing and hunched over his grease-stained nail-studded Compaq Presario after yet another three-Martini, four-baby-seal-kabob lunch, hammering out those forged memos about Bush's military ineptitude on his swiped copy of MS Word.

judi gemini,
I meant I was born June 13 and so a GEMINI!

Raj...will look..it will soon be 15 years since the quake, so Saturn will be squaring it's previous place.. Man, I just cannot believe it has been 15 years...it is still fresh in my mind! Like yesterday...and I've been through the major quake in LA in 1971 (I can't remember the date...but it was Asilomar, like the one in 1991 in LA), and all the ones in SF since 1979....and in 1958, there was a 5.7 quake right on the San Andreas fault, too...it was the biggest one after 1906 until 1989 (I was in 8th grade, it was spring, and the school sat right on the San Andreas Fault...talk about rocking and rolling!). 41 years....must be Uranus again, I'll need to look that up too.

judi.....

Thanks for the heads up on Mike Morford's latest.

God, I LOVE that man!!!!!

Raj....I only had time to look at Oct 17....didn't see the usual obvious pattern....somewhere in that day or the next, Pluto conj. Moon... and Saturn Squares the Sun, and widely squares Mercury (the actual square will happen some days earlier) Else where are trines....

Teg....been subscribing to Mark Morford's column for some years....you might want to do that too! I did hope it would cheer you up. As WV said some posts back, we only have to fear "fear itself".

Something I have to remind myself of almost daily!

Raj....I can see that as Saturn moves forward into Leo, but mostly in 3 years or so, into Pisces, we could come up with planets all in one half of the chart (from Saturn in Leo/Virgo to Uranus still in Pisces) depending on the time of year...probably in the fall.

Thanks, Pat. C.

Raj,
We share the same birthdate - June 13th!

Jo,
That's why I say we're born on the LUCKY 13!

From Bernadette Brady's "Predictive Astrology," this coming solar, Oct 14 -- 21 deg Libra and lunar, Oct 28 -- 5 deg Taurus eclipses , fall under Saros Cycle 6 south. She says, "This eclipse series is about being forceful and taking power. It has a manic flavour about it, with great force or strength manifesting in the relationship area. Individuals experiencing this Saros Series may experience sudden events, like falling in or out of love, or sudden sexual encounters. The individual may also exert a huge effort in some group activity."

Teresa, I have Sun at 5 deg Taurus, so I'll wait, watch and see with interest what comes my way. But mostly from what I understand, eclipses are more likely to affect world leaders and those famous or in power of some sort. I still can't help but look at the date we have for Abu Musab Zarqawi Oct 30 1966) whose Sun is at 6 deg Scorpio. I just noticed as well that he was born with the Pluto/Saturn opp, actually it is Pluto/Uranus opp Saturn/Chiron at 19-23 Virgo Pisces axis.

A Bush/GOP power grab is a no brainer, but with Zarqawi, perhaps something big is going to happen involving him and his followers?

judi gemini,
That means judi, the next 2 1/2 years when Saturn
moves into Leo, with similar planets configuration
watch out for an extreme calamatic event(what kind
of event, we don't know yet)

wv,
In that rotten con(elite? my foot) LIST, you forgot about very patriotic services of that ex
WEEP dan quayle!

Latest from the LAW journal, the whole exercise by the supreme?court 4 years ago was a total FARCE
allowing shrub to become p-resident, as if we did
not know this 4 years ago?

On the eclipses in Oct:

"A Bush/GOP power grab is a no brainer, but with Zarqawi, perhaps something big is going to happen involving him and his followers?"

OUCH!

How is a Bush/GOP power grab a no-brainer, other than the usual litany of news: forceful and effective--but misleading--TV ads, and throwing out new voter registrations?

And doesn't the Oct. 27 eclipse square Bush's ascendant (at 7 degrees Leo)?

Granted, the eclipse on Oct. 13 squares Kerry's and Edwards' suns, and by Oct. 27, the election may already be all but decided, but don't these aspects account for something? Please advise.

We are going to reap the whirlwind, I think...

I have been looking at the transits for tomorrow and it looks bad for Bush and good for Kerry. Kerry has four planets in his tenth and Transiting venus conjunct Jupiter. Bush has Tmoon in tenth, squaring his leo planets in the first and transiting mercury conjuncts Neptune and squares his Sun. How come no one has commented on these aspects yet? Is it wishful thinking or am I right that Bush looks like he will flub the debates tomorrow. Also, would someone take a look at the "event" chart for the debates and lets us know their assessment.

Stephanie,

I note also that the moon is squaring Bushy's ascendant, for what that's worth.

A partial retraction the eclipses:

I was looking at my Llewellyn planetary guide for the Oct. 13 eclipse, which has a typo. The eclipse, as most of you already know, is 21 degrees Libra, aspecting Kerry's Sun, but not as harshly as I originally thought. Oops!

Siobahn, I saw Steve Judd's site a couple of days ago. I was going to post a link to it and ask the astrologers here what they thought of Steve Judd. I've read his columns on and off for about a year and I haven't found his insights particularly on target. He (along with Marjorie Orr) have been predicting the end of Tony Blair practically every day for over a year. Now, they may be right, but their predictive timelines have fallen far short of the mark, so I hesitated to mention this current prediction on this board. I did, however, find it very ominous, especially when he referred to changes to the U.S. constitution at the very least of changes coming.

Kerry is going to win, damn it.

More good news and interesting astro - my apologies if this has been posted previously:

http://www.isarastrology.com/articles/election2004.php

Susan! I also read Steve Judd's columns on/off and have also found him to be either way off the mark or right on depending on what the prediction is. I think Blair is a bit like Bush - both have done some horrendous things, yet both have some sort of crazy ability to fall out a window and go up ..the worse things get for them the better they seem to avoid paying for it in any way and they just hang on. According to Steve Judd, Tony Blair should have been booted out of office there ages ago, but now he's setting to run again. I also think we here are always predicting the end of Bush as well ... and yet he's still here and I'm starting to wonder if we will ever see the end of him either! Seems what is up is now down, and vice versa .. no sence to this madness anymore at all and it's getting very hard to fight against the crazy stuff every day. What caught my eye about Steve Judd's prediction is the way he said something "Awesome and big" was supposed to happen either "to or in the USA". Does not sound like a light remark ... I just hope he's wrong (again)!

Siobhan - I'm constantly shaking my head over what's transpired over the last four years. At almost any time within the past 50 years, if someone had done what bush has, he would have been run out of office one way or another. I've never seen anything like it. Every president preceding this guy has paid for his mistakes (except Reagan who was really the media creation of his time).

The only way this guy is going down is via the law of Karma because the media isn't going to lay a glove on him and the majority of the American people have been so hornswaggled by the misadministration and their media cheerleaders that they don't know the truth and wouldn't recognize it if it reached out and snatched them baldheaded!

So, if Karma is the only thing that will bring bush to a reckoning, then I believe the American people are going to be in for the same punishment. We're in for it collectively despite what people as individuals believe.

Anyway, maybe what Judd is keying on has to do with the current geocosmic activity in the west. There really appears to be some very scary tectonic activity throughout the west all the way to Hawaii. But if you check back to his post of the 27th (I think) you'll note he specifically mentions changes to the U.S. constitution. If this administration remains in power, it has signalled their intentions that would impact the constitution or the amendments dealing with abortion, marriage and a revised draft bill. Who knows.

I also saw on Keith Olberman a couple of nights ago that Jackie Stallone (Sylvester's mom), the astrologer/psychic said her dogs predicted a bush win. She's kinda kooky, but she's been right about half the time.

Marguerite dar Boggia wrote a very detailed article a couple of years ago (I think it may have been linked here at Astroworld) using Vedic astrological transits that predicted bush's demise (using the 20-year election cycle/Tecumseh's Curse historical pattern). Her analysis actually looked at the charts of Laura, the twins, bush's parents and Cheney, in addition to dimson's, and all reflected the probability of his actual physical demise while in office. I googled to see if I could come up with the article but I wasn't able to find it just yet.

Whether through the law of Karma or retribution, it would seem that a human being couldn't commit the obscenities that this man has without having to face the consequences at some point.

Outstanding piece as usual Nancy. And a really great thread as well from all the Astroworlders.

I wish I could participate more but I am so overwhelmed with work. With Jupiter in the 6th at 00:01 Libra being set off by all the Sun, Jupiter, Mars transits and then Progressed Sun and Mars also coming to that degree exact this past week its been intense to say the least. Not much reward either, just work, work and more work.

But the reason for this post is to say that I don't want to be confused with Chicken Little because of what I said on the last thread--about the Iraq War situation (as well as our whole corporate capitalist society) being like the ill-fated poorly designed plane pushed off the cliff. I really was just wondering what in the world Kerry could possibly do to turn this situation (Iraq) around.

My suggestion for Kerry's inauguration speech:

"It is time now for this nation to accept the responsibility that comes with being the most powerful nation on earth. Just as a sure sign of the strength of character in an individual lies in having the courage to admit mistakes,a truly strong nation must have the courage to face hard truths and admit mistakes. It is only through having this courage to admit mistakes and the willingness to change that a nation, as with the individual, can truly grow and mature. This nation has been experiencing a great crisis ever since that terible day of September 11, 2001. The true test of the greatness of this nation lies before us. It is time for this nation to face up to the fact that this war in Iraq has been a mistake. (long passage here explaing why--no just cause . . . no real threat from Iraq, the war has not made this country any more secure, has not made the world any safer, has only made the problem of terrorism worse, we have not done the Iraqi people any favor, there are better ways spread democracy...etc).

"I served my country in the Vietnam War and upon my return my conscience led me to question the justice of that war and I had the courage then to speak out against the continuation of what I realized then was a mistake. I testified then in the Senate and asked our leaders 'How do you ask the last man to die for a mistake?'

"Now in taking the oath of office of the President of the United States I pledge that I will not ask the last man to die for a mistake. We will withdraw our military forces from Iraq. We will replace the force of arms with the force of good will. We will use our great resources not for destruction but for reconstruction.

"We will pledge before the world to uphold international law and never again to use our great military power unless it is absolutely necessary, only for self-defense and only when all peaceful means of resolving conflict have been exhausted.

"We will repudiate before the world the doctrine of pre-emptive strike and rededicate this nation to the goal of peace and justice in the world.

"It is only in taking this difficult step that this nation will perhaps finally really mature and truly become a great nation...."

or something like that ... am I only dreaming...

Susan! I've written a note to Steve Judd ...maybe he can shed some insight into what he meant. I'm thinking you are right .. could be a geocosmic thing, especially with Mt. St. Helen expected to errupt again shortly. I think Mother Earth is just as upset with what is being done to her and showing her displeasure ... hurricanes and tornadoes and now earthquakes gotta make one think! Earth is fighting back in her own way and this could get very ugly .. as that old ad campaign used to say "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" As for Jackie Stallone and her dogs ...she obviously has Republican dogs! My dogs are very democratic and they say "Kerry" (woof woof) is going to win!! They, unlike Jackie Stallone's dogs who seem to be wrong half the time, think they are always right ... so I've promised them a bucket of dog cookies if they pull this one off!

Susan, one of the reasons that people have (I've heard people express this) for not believing in Karma is because it looks as if people aren't getting "paid back" for what they have done in life. But as satisfying as that might be, seeing someone "get their's", when the system is as rigged as this one, we might not ever see his (or the rest of the Gorgons) get paid back.

But sometimes the payback may not be in this life. And I guess the Catholic doctrine holds that you can repent with your dying words and be forgiven for everything....

But then, Bush isn't Catholic!

I think we should start a karma watch....

Also, I got an email the Human Rights Campaign that the House is once again considering the Federal Marriage act banning gay marriage....

It's just like a game of Whack a Mole...you hit one and another one comes up in its place.

Gina, perhaps I should have written "attempt at power grab." In no way am I qualified to make a prediction on how this election will go. I meant 'no brainer' in the contex of GOP behaviors, which with K. Rove at the helm become more and more disgusting with every day.

If they are challenged or become the challengers to election results this Nov, then I can only imagine it will get quite ugly. That isn't from any astrological observations, just my own, of watching 'fascist freepers' at work.

Gina, perhaps I should have written "attempt at power grab." In no way am I qualified to make a prediction on how this election will go. I meant 'no brainer' in the contex of GOP behaviors, which with K. Rove at the helm become more and more disgusting with every day.

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be much end to how low they'll go. I see what you mean.

Watch Mt St Helens webcam at:

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/

About 2 weeks ago, I and many others wrote various newspapers and tv stations about the fallability of the Gallup Poll. Yesterday, MoveOn.org had a huge ad in the New York Times quoting all of us and then some. Who says proactive reactions don't work. Rob Hand on Pluto/Neptune oppositions. "It signifies encounters that cause vaious aspects of your life to be transformed. Most commonly, this transformation will take the form of disappearances of persons, circumstances or even possessions that you have become used to. You will also encounter forces that try to reveal aspects of your life that you have long kept hidden from yourself..." From Planets in Transits by Rob Hand. Maybe, just maybe...

Judi -
I don't think anyone who's looking at a person's life for evidence of them being required to pay a cosmic lesson would ever be satisfied. I think we have so many areas of our lives that are vulnerable to karma that are not public. We don't know publically (in most cases) the lessons that are being taught to others.

Interestingly, I've been reading Kitty Kelly's book. It's far better written than you'd have been told to expect. She's not the bush disser that we've been told to expect. It's been more revelatory to me in understanding this class of person than I've been accustomed to. We think in America that we're equal. When you read this book, you learn just how low the esteem these people have for the 'common' person in this country. It's shocking to learn how little these people value the non-blue-bloods of America and how ruthlessly they play their games. A game of tiddleywinks is a bloodsport to these guys.

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