As the fundamentalist Christmas promoters are threatening to boycott businesses not offering customers a "Merry Christmas," here is what is happening in the White House...

The president's season of hope and happiness

Salon War Room
Tim Grieve
December 1, 2005

We didn't make the list again this year, but we've got our sources: The 2005 White House Christmas card has just arrived in the War Room mailbox.

Wait, did we say "Christmas card"? With apologies to our Christianist friends,

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/21/christmas/index_np.html

we must report that you won't find the word "Christmas" anywhere on this joint production of Hallmark and the Republican National Committee. On the outside of the card, there's a Jamie Wyeth painting of a rather lonely-looking White House in the snow. On the inside, the president and the missus send us -- or somebody, anyway -- their "best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness."

A "holiday season of hope and happiness"?

Where's the Christ child? The manger? The star, the goats, the gold, frankincense and myrrh?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question283.htm

If the White House Christmas card were a department store, it would find itself on Bill O'Reilly's naughty list.

http://www.billoreilly.com/blog#-893655144949340323

[...] Read the rest at http://tinyurl.com/b2nd4


© Virginia Metze

http://tinyurl.com/cd86u


© Virginia Metze

by Henri Day
December 1, 2005
OpEdNews.com

Anybody remember Joe McCarthy ? It strikes me that there is a parallel between current events and those of the fall of 1953, when the junior Senator from Wisconsin turned his witch-hunting crusade against the Army. The people running the United States had found McCarthy and McCarthyism useful in scaring the country into a retreat from the New Deal policies they so detested, and acquiesced in his reckless attacks on various government departments and individuals connected with these policies, but when Joe turned his sights on the all-important instrument through which US corporate power was projected throughout the world - the Army - his days were numbered.

Serious imperialists have nothing at all against using ideologues to destroy domestic enemies, thereby consolidating their power, but when the ideology becomes a threat to that power, they turn against it.

My reading is that Rep Murtha speaks for a military, members of which have been so cowed by the Bush Administration that, fearful of damaging their careers, they have not dared speak for themselves. Rep Murtha, however, at 73 years of age and after 31 years of service in the House, has no career to lose, and is obviously willing to bring the concerns of an overstrained military apparatus - overstrained, despite a yearly budget as great as that of the rest of the world combined – front and centre.

[...] Read the whole article at http://tinyurl.com/9wu77


© Virginia Metze

Mark Crispin Miller's new book is "Fooled Again. How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them).

"MCM," as he is often identified with, was interviewed by Bob McChesney, WILL am 580 from 1-2 central time on Sundays. He interviewed MCM on November 20, 2005. If you want to hear the interview, it is available through http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/mediamatters/default.htm

His blogspot is http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/


© Virginia Metze

The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120405X.shtml

More than 100,000 people took to the streets in more than 30 countries yesterday, in the first world-wide demonstration to press for action to combat global warming.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120405Y.shtml

Frank Rich offers insight to the Bob Woodward affair with the Valerie Plame CIA leak, opening a window into the White House flimflams and the press's role in enabling them.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120405Z.shtml