Despite winning both houses of Congress, the Democrats still seem to believe they can deal reasonably with a reckless, intransigent president. And the coverage of Bush by the Washington press corps reminds you why it took two police reporters to break Watergate.

Al Gore isn't having any of that in his attack on the Bush presidency, "The Assault on Reason." The book -- devastating precisely because Gore has been so close to the pinnacle of American politics -- is a carefully considered elucidation of the Bush administration's crimes.

Bush's "theory of his own power is so vast that, in practice, it amounts to an assertion of power that is so obviously unconstitutional -- a power to simply declare what provisions of law he will and will not comply with."

One of Gore's themes is how fear overwhelms reason. The Bush regime, fulfilling Walter Lippman's prophecy of the manufacture of consent, has manipulated the public's fear to push its agenda.   more »

Democracy beware! TV titans and the marketing industry are gearing up to sap our will and make Americans more passive than ever. Their ultimate goal: the breakup of American character followed by the commercialization of the American soul.

This is TV’s negotiating time with advertisers. Networks and advertisers are meeting this month to plot the reinforcement and intensification of our mindless absorption of TV commercials.

It seems that not enough of us are sitting comatose for hours of non-stop consumerist reverie.

Too many of us, apparently, are getting up from TV sets to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. The industry is also upset at us for muting the commercials and wandering off to have a beer or acknowledge a family member.   more »

America is an international pariah, a true maverick, refusing to work with the rest of the world in order to resolve problems confronting humanity and has a long and varied history of aligning itself with a rather vicious assortment of dictators, tyrants, and despots willing to do our bidding at the expense of their own people.

As such, is increasingly beginning to resemble the fascist movements of Adolph Hitler in his nascent 1930’s attempt to take over the world.

Perhaps the greatest propaganda surrounds the fundamental ideology of our culture. We are led to believe that capitalism, an economic system in which it is assumed that self-interest (exclusive concern for one’s own family and personal welfare) is an undeniable good, that greed can (and perhaps should) be tolerated.   more »

While Latin America isn't very rich, the rich in Latin America have more money than God.

And, despite almost 500 years of intermarriage, the economic elite remains strikingly whiter-looking, compared to the more Indian and/or black-looking people at the bottom.

As Vicente Fox's former Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda admitted in 1995, Mexico's ruling elite has been getting whiter. Many powerful men in Mexico and throughout Latin America had recent ancestors who clawed their way up out of the darker masses.

Over the generations, their descendents get whiter-looking as the rich men marry the fair-skinned and fair-haired women—who are, interestingly, still considered the last word in beauty in Latin America.   more »

The lack of substantial action on climate change is not simply a case of “political inertia.” Rather, it is the logic of capitalism, which must continually expand in the drive for profit.

Capitalism is by its very nature an unceasing treadmill of production.

There is no conceivable alternative scenario within such a runaway-train system that leads toward a sustainable relation to the environment, much less a just society.

What is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of global society itself.   more »