The Daily Zero has a report in which it (as usual) allies itself with the scare-mongers in government who want to control your behavior. As summer approaches, this article is about skin cancer and its supposed cause by sunshine. First, the article conflates melanoma with skin cancers of all types and makes the remarkable statement (quoting the Environmental Protection Agency) that:

… there’s sufficient sun that Washington state ranks first nationally for women and fifth for men in the sun-linked skin cancer malignant melanoma …

So, we are to believe that sunshine causes melanoma because Washington ranks first in melanomas in women even though it does not rank high in days of sunshine. Hmm.

The problem with these kinds of scare articles is that you can manipulate statistics, especially those about relatively rare diseases, to support nearly any conclusion you want. A few cases, more or less, can change the apparent statistics when error measures and confidence limits are not mentioned. A lovely example of this comes from data from the Washington State Dept. of Health. The graph below, from the DoH, shows the incidence of melanoma among people with varying levels of education [vertical axis is labeled "Percent Population Are College Graduates"]:

The Health Department doesn’t know what to make of these data. Neither do I. But you can imagine the headline in the Daily Zero:

Pure nonsense, of course, but that’s the point.

The Boston Globe reports (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON — As record oil prices turn attention to the need for renewable fuels, momentum is building in Congress to buck Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s bid to block the proposed Cape Cod wind energy project, potentially reviving efforts to construct the sprawling windmill farm in Nantucket Sound.

Environmental groups have launched an aggressive advertising and lobbying campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon Kennedy and back a promising source of renewable energy. If the wind farm becomes a reality, advocates say, it could provide three-fourths of the Cape and Islands’ energy needs and could set an example for the nation.

The 130-turbine, 24-square-mile cluster of windmills would be about 8 miles from Kennedy’s home in Hyannis Port, and he has long opposed it. The Coast Guard bill would give Governor Mitt Romney, another wind farm opponent, the power to veto it, even if the project clears all other hurdles.

Kennedy rejected suggestions that he doesn’t like the wind farm because it would be near his Cape home, and said the project probably wouldn’t be visible from the Kennedy compound. He said he’s against the project because it would create a range of environmental and navigational problems and would hurt tourism, one of the area’s key industries.

Golly gosh. Hate-filled, bloated windbag Kennedy sounds just like one of those "greedy and heartless" Republicans. No surprise; nearly all politicians are hypocrits and liars.

Update: I couldn’t resist this other funny newspaper headline from The Financial Times [note: link will disappear by tomorrow]:

Oil price drives EXXON to $8.5bn profit
Shares fall as figures fall short of expectations

When I was in high school, one of my Latin teachers (yes, I took 4 years of Latin then) was unable to control the class. We were a bunch of smartasses and when it became apparent that he couldn’t control us, we did some very silly things. Example: the teacher used to sit on the same corner of his desk and never stood up or walked around during a class. So, one day, a few of us came into the classroom early and smeared LePage’s glue on that corner. The teacher came in and sat down on the desk corner as usual without noticing the glue. By the end of the class, the glue had dried and when he stood up, the seat of his pants were ripped out. It was hilarious and his only reaction was that, if he found out out who carried out the prank, he would put parentheses around their names in his class roll book. That was his standard threat against us — to put parentheses around our names. Sometimes he would go so far as to say to a rambunctious kid, "Now Mister", and wag his finger. Talk about shock and awe; the horror!

George Bush reminds me of my Latin teacher. The Congress keeps attaching pork spending, "earmarks", to various bills and Bush keeps threatening to veto them. The latest Congressional pork escapade is an example. The "fiscal and ethical reformers" have attached 14.5 billion dollars to a war spending bill, have intimated that they will attach more pork and have refused to change the rules to bar earmarks.

"Congressional reform" is an oxymoron and Bush’s veto threat is as meaningless as putting parentheses around a student’s (or Congressman’s) name.

Now Mister! What a bunch of jerks.

You would be justified in saying that your faithful libertarian commenter sometimes gets repetitious. I have ranted about Washington State’s recent tax and spending increases here, here, here and here. Well, here I go again. Mirabile visu, in spite of my previous rants, the Governoire and her socialist minions in the State Soviet have continued to raise taxes and spending.

After claiming that they were "responsible" with your tax money and that they had created a billion dollar "reserve", the Governoire’s budget office now says that next year there will be a 718 million dollar shortfall in tax revenues. This money will be "required" to finance all the new programs, the new bureaucratic jobs and pay hikes that were put into place in that last "responsible" budget. That budget, I remind you, was passed after huge tax increases, including a voter-supported hike in the gasoline tax, and after the State found itself to be the recipient of a surprise revenue surplus.

The Governoire and the socialists in the legislature are saying that they don’t want another tax increase "now". In governmentese, this means that they, the public employees unions and their left-wing media allies (the Seattle Times and the Olympian) will wait until you have forgotten about all the recent tax and spending hikes before they start their next campaign to steal still more of your money. Then they will trot out the usual suspects — a homeless person, a sick child, the failing school system, etc. — all examples of State failure, to blame you for being selfish if you are not willing to fork over more of your money to the State.

To be explicitly repetitious, the State does not care about your needs or your family’s needs. If you need to fix your roof or your car or your teeth, the State’s position is: to hell with you, the State’s needs come first. It is remarkable that you keep falling for this claptrap. You keep voting into office people who want your money and who want power over you. The statistics show that, in spite of a booming economy and rising worker productivity, average real incomes have not risen. The government puts the blame on "the rich" and on "big business". It fails to mention how much more both the feds and the states have taken away from you in taxes and subsidies to favored businesses.

So, when will you get tired of falling for the politicians’ lies and demand an end to the ever-increasing size of government? When will you stop complaining and begin to throw out of office the bums (and I literally mean "bums") who forcibly take your money and try to make you feel guilty in order to justify their stealing? I’m afraid the answer is — never.

Every now and then, the newspapers and other media report the finding of a gene in which a mutation causes some disease or other. The papers go gaga, press conferences are held and statements are issued telling us how close we now are to finding a cure for the disease based on the new genetic information.

The latest hoopla is about a very rare disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva or FOP. It’s a terrible disease in which the afflicted person’s connective tissue such as ligaments and tendons turn into bone. These people are eventually immobilized by the excess bone production. Now, a gene called called ACVR1 has been found to have a single mutation in people with FOP.

"We’ve reached the summit," said Dr. Frederick Kaplan, an orthopedist whose team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine pinpointed the cause of FOP.

But have the orthopods really reached "the summit"?

In 1956, Vernon Ingram and J.A. Hunt sequenced sickle hemoglobin and showed that a single aminoacid substitution occurred in the protein in sickle cell disease. Ingram, knowing the genetic codes for the various aminoacids, was able to predict the exact point mutation in sickle cell disease which then became the first genetic disorder whose molecular basis was known.

So what? Well, the genetic cause of sickle cell disease has been known since 1956. That makes it 50 years. There is still no known cure for sickle cell disease, except that sometimes complete replacement of the bone marrow with normal marrow works. That’s because erythrocytes, the carriers of hemoglobin, are made in the marrow. But bone marrow transplantation is a horrific procedure and does not always work.

But who cares about results when you’ve got a new gene to play with and you get all that wonderful publicity and fat new research grants.

Next time the media go wild about a "significant advance" in medicine due to the discovery of a new gene and, gosh, disease cures are just around the corner, take a deep breath and remember all those kids who still get sickle cell disease. It isn’t the discovery of new genes that is so important but finding ways to alter them or replace them. When that problem is solved, break out all the champagne you can find.

I haven’t commented on the FDA’s latest ruling on the medical use of marijuana. So, here’s what I think. The FDA says:

… no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use. There are alternative FDA-approved medications in existence for treatment of many of the proposed uses of smoked marijuana.

It would be one thing if the FDA was just sounding off and its comments had no direct effect upon us. But their statement will be used by the feds to override individual state decisions, such as that here in Washington, to permit medical use of marijuana.

There are a number of problems with this ruling by our masters:

1. A study by the National Institute of Medicine (NIM) in 1999 came to the opposite conclusion.
2. Even if there were no such NIM study, the problem with the FDA ruling is that it is statistical; i.e., there are many individuals who are helped by marijuana and to deny them relief from pain and nausea because other people may not be helped, is the essence of one-size-fits-all authoritarianism characteristic of central government.
3. The Constitution (remember that document?) does not authorize the federal government to intervene in health matters. Therefore, it is a state prerogative, at least from a legal viewpoint.
4. However, there is the general libertarian objection: the State, whether federal or local, has no business controlling what individuals decide to do with their own bodies. FDA rulings assume that the government owns (has control over) your body and has the power to decide for you what you can do with the body you own.

This situation is a classic demonstration of why the FDA should be abolished in the name of individual freedom. For a more bureaucratic argument (the FDA is interfering with research) see this comment from Scientific American. They’re trying to find a substitute that doesn’t get you high. Why you shouldn’t enjoy yourself while using a medication that helps your pain and nausea, only right-wing moralists can say. I think it’s a wonderful side-effect that should be incorporated into other medical drug treatments. But that’s just me.

It is long past time to stop the government from trying to control what you decide is best for your body, whether that’s marijuana or cheeseburgers. The FDA is, first and foremost, a political organization. FDA-approved means politically approved. As we libertarians say, "The government is not your friend".

Though set in a different context (sports), today’s quote is from comedian Argus Hamilton:

There’s simply no evidence that sobriety will prevent violence. President Bush is proof of that.

Amen.

The Daily Zero headlines:

Report documents big increase in terrorism incidents in world

But if you read a little further, it turns out the whole thing is an accounting change. Until recently, the US government was only counting "transnational" terrorist acts and not those inside a country such as, oh, Iraq.

A few years ago, the government changed the way it measured obesity. That led to a dramatic increase in official obesity numbers, which in turn, led to the current idiotic notion that there is an obesity epidemic. And that is leading to more calls for government control of people’s diets.

Now the government is changing the way it measures terrorist acts. Suddenly, the numbers are up. Does that mean the "War on Terrorism" is an even worse government program than we thought or will the numbers be used to call for still more government spending and more intrusiveness in order to fight the "growing menace"?

The news article goes on to quote a "counterterrorism official" who said, "The numbers are a very small part of the picture and can’t be used as a metric" to determine the effectiveness of anti-terrorism programs. If the numbers are a small part of the picture and can’t be used as a metric, then what can be used? Zero is a number. If there were zero terrorist incidents, would that mean there was still terrorism?

All these accounting games are excuses to keep us frightened, to enlarge government power and to maintain the jobs and benefits of the counterterrorism bureaucrats. Homeland Security has more to do with securing government jobs than with protecting us from dangers.

Apparently, we have to add the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to the list of judges who cannot read the Constitution. By a 2 to 1 decision in the case Harper v. Poway Unified School Dist., the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment does not apply to speech (an anti-homosexuality T-shirt) by students in government-run schools. The judges are unable to read the line in the Constitution that says, "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech …" I wonder which part of "no law" the judges are incapable of comprehending. There is no qualifying phrase such as, "except if some other people find your viewpoint offensive".

Putting aside the question of whether constitutions are ultimately destined to fail, the idea that any country can be a nation ruled by law and not by men, is plainly untenable. Laws are applied by men under specific circumstances, and do not operate by themselves in some ideal fantasy world. It is up to men to interpret and apply the law in the way is was written and not to invent ways to circumvent it. If people become unsatisfied with constitutional protections, they can amend the Constitution. Otherwise the law has no meaning and government becomes completely arbitrary with no protections for any liberties.

The Ninth Circuit has attempted to intoduce a political correctness exception into the First Amendment. The Supremes must strike their ruling down.

Well, you’re just gonna have to believe me on this one. When I went out on my deck this morning, there was a bald eagle sitting on a branch in one of the trees between our house and the lake. Here’s a picture:

The arrow points to the eagle that isn’t there, but you shoulda seen it. By the time I got my camera, it was gone. This is the 2nd day in a row that it came by.

But wait. Here’s a picture of Gypsie, our Calico Cat, surveying her queendom. She believes herself to be the Queen of Lake Saint Clair and who am I to contradict her?

And since, today, Google has a cartoon based on a Miro picture on its web site, just for the hell of it, here’s a real Miro:

Happy.

The retired generals now calling for the firing of Sec’y. of Defense, Rumsfeld, are not friends of liberty. Their criticism of Rumsfeld et al. is not that the US government should not have invaded Iraq but that the government did it badly. If they had thought that the imperialist adventure was wrong and/or unconstitutional, they should have resigned at the time of, or prior to, the invasion and made known their objections publicly. But they didn’t do that and, if the results of the invasion had resulted in what they and their civilian masters saw as "good", we would be hearing nothing from them now. They were and are the handmaidens of US imperialism, with little regard for the freedom of people in other countries to decide their own political structures and with little regard for the deleterious effects on US domestic freedoms that are part of the cost of imperialism.

The question is what would be different now if Rumsfeld got kicked out by the "Decider-in-Chief"? The answer is: nothing. Nothing except that it would appear that Bush would be repudiating himself and that is something he will never do.

The generals and others are worried that the final political outcome in Iraq will be a de facto or de jure splitting of the country into 3 pieces — Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Why the sense of horror over this? Iraq is a country manufactured by Britain after WWI from those very same 3 pieces. The fear of such an outcome comes from the fact that the US government thinks it cannot control such a fragmented area (in spite of its half-a-billion dollar "embassy" now under construction) and would not be able to dictate local policy, particularly with regard to oil. But to keep the 3 groups together will require the same kind of repressive force used by Saddam Hussein. Hence the huge embassy and long-term military occupation (the "Long War").

The generals are not patriots. They just want imperial wars to run more smoothly so that there is little to no domestic opposition. Then they can aid their masters in killing opponents of "democracy" and US control of the world while, back home, we are all concerned about more important matters, such as whether or not Earth is an ex-prison planet used to create thetan spirits, as described by Xenu Tom Cruise.

When the State pollutes the environment, it’s not that they’re "evil and greedy" people. No, they just have an "image problem". After all, the State means well and only "cares" for you and wants to "protect" you. The Seattle Times headlines:

Biodiesel suffers image setback

It’s an industry praised by environmentalists and heavily funded by state lawmakers. But it turns out that the promise of locally produced biodiesel also comes with the potential for pollution — and one of the state’s first large-scale refineries is already running into trouble.

The state Department of Ecology has warned the operators of a biodiesel-crushing plant in Creston, Lincoln County, a small town near Spokane, that the company has committed an "egregious" violation of state air-quality laws by emitting toxic methanol vapors without a permit.

State investigators also say they have found spills of vegetable oil or biodiesel at the site. Now they are demanding that the owners of the company, Air Energy, show that they can properly handle the plant’s industrial waste.

The horror! The State’s violation of its own air-quality law is not the problem (according to the State). It’s that the State’s biodiesel company, subsidized by millions of your tax dollars, emitted "toxic methanol vapors" without a permit. Apparently, pollution, especially by a State-subsidized company, is OK as long as they have a permit. The sin was not polluting but failing to obey some State regulation.

The State believes it can enter the fuel market by using your tax money to start-up a biodiesel industry here. Not only will the State take your money to finance the industry, it will create a bureaucracy to oversee that industry and eventually it will mandate your use of State-produced fuel. That will signal the end of a market in fuel in the state. We will have truly entered the era of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Washington, with government owning and operating major industries. The Governoire and the Legislature all think they can run an economy better than a free market. They hold this belief in spite of a century of demonstrated economic failure in socialist economies across the globe.

Once again we see that the State is really not your friend. It is only interested in control.

Democrats have again attacked Bush for an "absence of leadership" for "failing to slow" the rapid rise of US gasoline prices, which now are over three dollars per gallon in parts of the country:

In a letter to the president, 15 Democratic members of the US Senate also renewed their call for an "energy summit" to discuss strategies for tackling the rising cost of fuel, and urged his support for proposed anti-price gouging legislation.

Too bad that none of the Democrats has a clue about economics and want to nationalize the oil industry by dictating prices. That will only produce severe shortages and further enlarge the government bureaucracy.

But the Democrats were close. A major part of the current high price of gasoline is directly attributable to Bush’s policy with regard to Iran. His threats have destabilized the oil market and caused jittery people to buy oil at nearly any price. After all, if Bush attacks Iran, oil supplies will drop off dramatically and prices will rise so high that severe economic damage will occur here.

But leave it to the Dems to get it almost right. If they only weren’t doctrinaire socialists by reflex and took Econ 101, then they might be worth listening to just a little bit.

Bureaucrats will do nearly anything to make themselves look good (it’s called CYA) and make their programs look good, too. The federal attempt at taking over state school systems, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program, is a perfect illustration. State school bureaucrats are not reporting scholastic failures from as many as 2 million children, mostly minority kids, in order to make their "success" numbers look better than they are. The Washington State education bureaucracy is one of the biggest cheaters.

Now it’s up to the feds to decide what to do — crack down on the states (i.e., threaten to take away federal taxpayers’ dollars) or let the states do as they like. If the feds let the states do what they want, then there is/was no reason for NCLB in the first place. If the feds crack down, we are well on the way to a soviet-style, centralized educational bureaucracy where the feds will control all major educational programs and decisions. If you think public schools stink now, just wait and see what they’re like under federal control. We’ll have one-size-fits-all mediocrity (or worse) with no input from parents. The DC bureaucrats will know even better than home-grown bureaucrats what your child needs to learn in school.

We need to kick the federal government out of the education business entirely. After we accomplish that now almost impossible trick, we will need to kick the state government out of education, too. That will be even harder to do.

Always on the lookout for new ways to steal more money from taxpayers, the British government’s Commission for Rural Communities:

… is encouraging the Government to introduce a special category of council tax to deal with those who, in its opinion, do not live in their homes enough of the time to contribute properly to the health of their local economies.

So the Brits now want a tax on absenteeism. This is classic bureaucratic nonsense. If you own a second home, would you have to punch a timeclock, register with the police or what, so that the bureaucrats can determine whether you have "contributed properly to the health of your local economy"? The very upside-down view here is that, since taxes are supposed to pay for services, the government wants you to pay more than your neighbors when you use fewer services. Classic bureaucratic logic.

(I think this tax is being proposed by the same morons who, a few years ago, wanted to stop Britains from using kitchen knives that had blades longer than 2 inches.)

Instead of paying taxes to support the local economy, owners and buyers of second houses would move outside Britain; it’s just a short hop across the channel. The unintended consequences of this tax policy would be to reduce tax revenues in rural areas. But then, no one ever accused bureaucrats in any country of being able to think.

Definition:

glo·ri·fy tr.v. glo·ri·fied, glo·ri·fy·ing, glo·ri·fies

1. To give glory, honor, or high praise to; exalt.
2. To cause to be or seem more glorious or excellent than is actually the case: Your descriptions have glorified an average house into a mansion.
3. To give glory to, especially through worship.

Today in Britain, under the new "Terrorism Act 2006", it is now a criminal offence to "glorify" terrorism in the hope of encouraging others to carry out such atrocities. Free speech there has been dealt another blow. Since there is no legal definition of glorification, anyone or any group could be ordered to stop its activities because some bureaucrat determines that their actions "glorify" terrorism. So, for example, passionate language in objecting to British or other government actions could run people afoul of the law. Now, everyone will have to try to decide if what they say amounts to such glorification and they could not know in advance whether a government agent would decide that it did. This clearly puts more than just a "chill" on free speech in Britain. It makes legal prosecution for glorification an arbitrary act of government. Besides further limiting free speech, it makes it impossible to know in advance if you are going to violate the law.

This is the essence of totalitarian control. You will have to try to avoid saying what you think the government might not approve of. And even then, oops, you thought you were safe but you’re a criminal anyway. Too bad.

The British government is denying its citizens one of their unalienable rights in the name of protecting that right. Contradiction? Hypocrisy? Inefficiency? Of course. That’s what government does best. And there is zero evidence that such a law will have any effect on terrorism. But, clearly, that’s not the point either. The point is control. That is what agents of government really want above all else.

Humpty Dumpty would surely be pleased.

The Daily Zero is one of those newspapers that run an ongoing barrage of articles about the horrors of global warming. Just today, the Zero ran another one, this time bemoaning the "fact" that plants are not going to "cure" global warming. The idea is that, since plants use carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce oxygen, if there were enough plants gobbling up that CO2, then they might mitigate the greenhouse effect blamed on CO2. The article claims that there just aren’t enough plants or the existing plants are not active enough metabolically to significantly reduce CO2 levels. Therefore, we’re all gonna die from global warming unless we do something, right?

It is bizarrely interesting to note that California has already declared that CO2 is a pollutant emitted by automobiles. Therefore, California claims the right to regulate CO2 emissions in order to save us from global warming.

I won’t rehash all the reasons why global warming is not man-made and is not a serious threat requiring draconian economic regulations. I only note two things:

1. Water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and there’s lots more of it around. Can government order the ocean, for example, to stop putting out water vapor?
2. CO2 is emitted by politicians and eco-crazies every time they talk about global warming. We should put a tax on these people whenever they open their mouths or limit the number of words they can speak in any 24 hour period. It would be constitutional under the "compelling state interest" doctrine. And it would rid the atmosphere of one of its major contaminants: political bullshit. Call it a "carbon tax" on politicians.

As I have noted before, the earth is emerging from an ice age. The coming temperature rise has nothing to do with man-made pollutants. Global warming will occur no matter what we do. It will be gradual (over many thousands of years) and, on balance, will do more good than harm. Let the politicians and eco-crazies howl. As long as we can keep them from taking away more of our freedom we’ll be OK.

The Washington State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) was passed in order to allow local governments to assess fees on developments that could cause "probable specific adverse environmental impacts" on the natural environment. These so-called "mitigation fees" were supposed to be used to help restore environmental damage caused by new construction and are theoretically paid by builders of new homes, but are actually passed on to buyers.

But government has expanded the definition of adverse impacts to whatever it wants in order to collect more money from taxpayers without having to ask their permission. So now, for example, there are SEPA "mitigation fees" charged by county school boards to help offset the costs of new school construction brought on by rising populations in the rural parts of the state. Two years ago, Thurston County tried to get voters to authorize construction of a new jail. Part of the plan for financing the jail included twisting SEPA around so that the government considered that any new house construction had an adverse environmental impact on the jail itself and therefore mitigation fees could be used to help pay for the jail.

Government will use any ruse or excuse or expand any program in order to take more of your money. It especially likes arrangements where you have no choice and no vote. An editorial in today’s Daily Zero complains that Thurston County’s school mitigation fees ($2,025 per home) are too low. What does "too low" mean? Well, it’s less than surrounding school districts charge. The Zero is always the handmaiden of the State when it comes to raising taxes.

Government schools, besides doing a bad job of educating students, always claim to be underfunded and are always seeking new ways to steal your money. If government were out of the education business, not only would non-environmentally related mitigation fees disappear but so would the huge tax burden and government bureaucracy involved in education. Getting government out of education would be the single best action that we could take to promote liberty.

According to the Seattle Times:

An Associated Press analysis of education levels in America’s largest cities lists Seattle as the best-educated city in 2004 with just over half the adults having bachelor’s degrees. Following closely were San Francisco; Raleigh, N.C.; Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas.

Best-educated. Really? First of all, how does getting a bachelor’s degree qualify someone as "educated"? All it means is that a person has spent 4 or more years on a college campus somewhere (getting who knows what grades in who knows what subjects) and has been handed a piece of paper testifying to that fact. If a person went to Evergreen State College, for example, he or she may have "studied" installation art, community studies, consciousness studies, multicultural counseling, global warming (of course), visualizing ecology, feminist theory, gender studies, family and home futurism, indigenous American women, needlework arts, making a difference: doing social change, awareness and sustainability, just to mention a few of the rigorous intellectual challenges offered by that school.

Apparently, "educated" now simply means having gone to college. It no longer describes an internal state of knowing how to learn and of knowing one’s limitations, learned from grappling with difficult ideas. It no longer means a deep familiarity with history, language, philosophy, economics, science and art. At best, it now implies knowing what you should think to be a good member of the collective.

It is no wonder that "educated" Seattle is largely populated by brainwashed socialists who know nothing and think nothing of individual liberty.

Reporter, Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, now says that Bush is so alarmed by Iran’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that privately he refers to him as “Hitler”. Further, Hersh claims, against the objections of at least some military chiefs, Bush is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran.

If these reports are true, they reinforce the perception of some, including me, that Bush is a dangerously insane, certifiable, paranoid nut-case.

How else to describe someone who talks about the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons that do not exist and that are a danger to the US, while at the same time threatening to use US nuclear weapons that do exist? Being President of the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war (against civilian populations), Bush tries to convince us and himself that it not the US government that is a nuclear threat to the world, but it is a small country with no nuclear weapons that is the real threat. The neo-crazies still think that if they attack a country, its citizens will rise up against their government. In spite of overwhelming evidence that this belief is false (see Britain, Japan and Germany in WWII, for examples), the Bushites cling to their delusional belief that people in other countries see them as their saviors.

The real Hitler, in September 1939, told the German people that Poland had tried to invade Germany and that the German Army was "returning fire". He lied. So who is behaving more like the real Hitler, Bush or Ahmadinejad? Who lied to his people to start a war? And who is is either so insane or so blinded by his politico-religious ideology that he wants to attack a country that is no serious military threat to his people, and attack them with nuclear bombs? Hint: it ain’t Ahmadinejad.

We need to stop Bush and his mad cronies before they kill more innocents and destroy what’s left of liberty in America.