If you need a reminder of the reasons to celebrate the approaching end of George W. Bush’s tenure as president of the United States, search no further than Torturing Democracy.

 

This powerful, damning documentary will air on selected PBS television stations this month, among them WNET-Channel 13 in New York City. The entire film also will be available online for viewing at www.torturingdemocracy.org starting Oct. 10.

 

This compelling example of video story-telling recounts in merciless detail the steps the Bush Administration took on a road to torture, beginning less than a month after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The compelling narrative outlines how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their attorneys, among them White House counsel and later Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, shredded the U.S. Constitution and international, military and U.S. law all in the name of supposedly protecting this country. It’s like a train wreck: You cannot look away even though you are horrified and appalled.

By Rob Kall/North Star Writers Group

Have you seen the reports of the shocked faces of the leaders of Congress when George W. Bush's economic czars, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, informed them of the deadly threat of financial meltdown that the United States and even the world economy faced if something dramatic was not done immediately?

So they come out, shaking in their boots, telling the nation how awful things were, how close to the abyss we've come.

Sounds too much like a WMD story to me.

This sounds far too similar to Bush's surrogates Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell warning us – at the United Nations and in Congress in 2003 – that Iraq and its WMDs were an imminent threat to the nation and the world. Back then, Senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and most of the rest of the Democrats spinelessly assented to accept the story they were told, failed to challenge the data or demand other options. Now they all apologize to us. 

By David B. Livingstone/North Star Writers Group

A few days ago, when Hurricane Gustav was still just a gleam in a meteorologist’s eye, a James Dobson/ “Focus on the Family” cultist named Stuart Shepard released a whimsical little YouTube video wherein he pleaded with viewers to pray for rain “of Biblical proportions” to wash out Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. (Video helpfully archived at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJY0NuBC7vo).

We have been told that Shepard’s “Lord” works in mysterious ways. Now we also know that sometimes he even displays a certain grim sense of humor.

While nary a drop landed on Barack Obama’s head, Shepard’s presumed candidate of choice, John McCain, now stands to be engulfed by an Old Testament-sized disaster of his own, with wayward God-willed precipitation likely to be a determinative element in the outcome.

By David B. Livingstone/North Star Writers Group

England’s Mail On Sunday newspaper, a right-wing rag serving as the print equivalent of Fox News, has begun to serialize A Swim-On Part In The Goldfish Bowl: A Memoir by Carol Thatcher, daughter of the former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which recounts her mother’s painful struggle with stroke-induced dementia.

The revelation that Thatcher, once renowned for her command of language and “blotting-paper” memory for factual detail, now struggles to complete a spoken sentence seems a sad finale to the life of a leader who was once the most powerful woman in the world. It is an interesting turn that Thatcher’s final days seem to be mirroring those of her Trans-Atlantic friend and accomplice Ronald Reagan, with whom she energetically conspired to destroy the last remaining vestiges of integrity, equality, compassion and economic equity to be found in the governments of the West’s two leading democracies.

North Star Writers Group, a news syndicate based in Michigan, is looking for two fiery liberals to beef up its line-up.

Must be able to produce weekly material and make deadlines.

Please send all submissions to angie@northstarwriters.com.

Submissions will be reviewed and replies will be given to those we are interested in.

By David B. Livingstone/North Star Writers Group

It should be a source of no small astonishment that at the age of 71, Arizona’s John Sidney McCain should be the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

 

To date, the “maverick” (whatever that means) senator’s most memorable and meaningful accomplishment has been membership in the “Keating Five,” the coterie of corrupt savings and loan chieftain Charles Keating’s bought-and-paid-for senatorial buddies whose advocacy on his behalf stalled regulatory action against his insolvent financial empire, thus dooming thousands of depositors to the loss of their life savings.

 

As a treacherous and distasteful denouement to the savings-and-loan wipeout of the 1980s – a debacle of deregulation that cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention wreaking financial ruin upon communities and consumers from coast to coast – McCain’s senatorial pals effectively whitewashed his role, as well as those of most of his Keating comrades. This act of betrayal and institutional hubris enabled McCain to salvage his undistinguished political career by the skin of his teeth, treating America to an additional 29 years of bad ideas, failed initiatives and continued genuflection before his corporate paymasters.

By Candace Talmadge/North Star Writers Group

It’s every gay person’s worst nightmare in horrific waking reality.

 

You and your partner are out of state on vacation. Your partner unexpectedly collapses and is rushed to the emergency room, dying. And you cannot get in to see your partner – even though your friends back home fax to the hospital your partner’s legally valid medical power of attorney naming you as guardian in just this kind of tragic circumstance.

 

This outrage happened in Florida in February 2007 to Janice Langbehn when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed just before the couple and three of their four children were to board a cruise ship. Pond, 39, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, but when Lengbehn and the children arrived, the physicians and staff refused to allow them to see Pond for nearly eight hours except for one five-minute visit arranged by a Catholic priest.

 

The doctors at Jackson Memorial – Alois Zauner and Carlos Alberto Cruz – even acknowledged there was no medical reason to deny Langbehn and the children the right to visit Pond, who died 18 hours after suffering a massive stroke.

 

The social worker on duty, Garnett Frederick, reportedly told Langbehn that she was in an antigay city and state, and that she could not expect to get any information about Pond or acknowledgement as family. Really. After almost two decades of living together and raising four children, the two women still did not qualify as family.

 

To pile on, when Langbehn sought a death certificate for Pond in order to obtain life insurance and Social Security benefits for Pond’s children, she was denied by both the state of Florida and the Dade County Medical Examiner.

By Eric Baerren

I’ve got some numbers to throw at you – 10; 20; 675,000; 20 million; 3.3; 10.4 billion; 500; 50. Okay, now let’s start explaining. It has to do with oil and ANWR.

 

Ten is the rough number of years it would take, if Congress authorized drilling in ANWR tomorrow, for oil to reach the market.

 

Why a decade? It takes time to build the necessary infrastructure – regarding ANWR, through a hostile environment – and also for oil companies to figure out the most profitable places and ways to drill and pump. Because, like with everything else, it takes a while for production to ramp up, it would take probably another decade for ANWR oil recovery to hit its peak. That is, it’d be about two decades from the day the president signs legislation authorizing it to the time when it is expected to start having its most meaningful impact. Once it reaches peak, according to the Energy Information Administration, about 675,000 barrels of oil would hit the U.S. market per day.

By Nathaniel Shockey/North Star Writers Group

In a Republican presidential debate a year ago, Rudy Giuliani was asked if the day Roe v. Wade were overturned would be a good day for America.

He said, “It’d be OK.”

That was one of my favorite responses ever to a political question. The point was that while he strongly disagrees with abortion, he’s not convinced legal restrictions are the solution. It was probably one of the reasons he got slaughtered in the Republican race, but I couldn’t help but admire and even revere both his candor and his opinion. It’s what some of us refer to as ballsy, to accept that some issues aren’t black and white.

Governmental interference only really works as far as the society’s moral spectrum will allow. But considering Amsterdam, for example, we have to ask ourselves if there are some moral standards that deserve a place in the Constitution. No matter how bonkers the general public becomes, our Constitution can, at the very least, make it difficult for them to destroy their own lives and the lives around them.

This consequential debate surfaced in full force when the California Supreme Court recently legislated that same-sex couples can legally marry.

Question #1: Would the day the Supreme Court passed a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples be a good day for America?

I’ll do my best impression of America’s Mayor and say that it’d be OK.

By Eric Baerren/North Star Writers Group

There has been some sound and fury over The New York Times investigation of former generals used as analysts for the major cable networks. Sadly, as is so often the case, it misses the mark.

Much of it supposes that the generals were easy dupes of the Pentagon, given manipulated information that was simply issued forth during newscasts as propaganda.

 

Well, what was anyone to expect? These are former generals, men trained to command large groups of men in battle, not journalists.

 

There is good reason to point fingers at this small group of people. They were, at one time, entrusted with some of the nation’s most important national security secrets. They were, at one time, given the responsibility, should circumstances dictate, to send men to their deaths. And yet, when the nation needed them the most to question their orders, they instead chose to buy the company line.

 

According to The Times article, former MSNBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, who taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

By Dan Calabrese/North Star Writers Group

Hannah Montana is on in our house more than I care to acknowledge, but such is life when your wife, er, I mean, your seven-year-old is a manic Disney Channel fan. It’s actually a pretty funny show, although it doesn’t hold a candle to Cory in the House. (You just can’t beat White House chase scenes with Benny Hill-style music.)

But this show could not have turned the now-besieged Miley Cyrus into a teen-pop phenomenon, and thus a “role model” if viewers of the show – and I mainly mean parents – could keep the whole thing in perspective.

Fifteen-year-old Miley is catching heat for posing in some rather suggestive photos by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, including one in which she is topless but covering herself with a sheet.

Yeah, I said she’s 15. What do you think will happen when her father, erstwhile mullet legend Billy Ray Cyrus, finds out? Oh yeah, that’s right. He was there for the photo shoot. He was even in a couple of the photos. That’s one American parent who’s not beside himself over it. Unfortunately, he might be the only one.

By Llewellyn King/North Star Writers Group

There must be some nostalgia at CBS News for the good old days, when the network was roundly hated and people at the political extremes longed to see it fail. Now that it is failing (it is a laggard in the ratings), nobody seems to care. Gone are the conservatives, who wanted to buy the network to sanitize it and rout out alleged liberal journalists. Also gone are the political lefties, who believed that CBS was the captive of its advertisers.

 

In media, to be hated is an affirmation that you are succeeding.

 

At The Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association annual dinner this week, the happiest people were at the Fox News tables. Roger Ailes, the principal architect of Fox’s huge success as a news network, and his star host, Bill O’Reilly, were beaming – well aware that most people in the room believe that the Fox News Channel has degraded broadcast news.

 

It is not just CBS that is hurting, but also other traditional media as well – most especially newspapers. Marylanders used to hate The Baltimore Sun. Now they worry that their venerable newspaper is on the ropes, and may be sold to quite the wrong kind of person.

 

They used to say in newsrooms, “If you aren’t hated, you’re not doing this job right.” Unfortunately, the quality of hatred that most news organizations face is sadly watered down. Generalized attacks on the “liberal media” and the “mainstream media” just don’t pack much of a wallop. They tell us more about the attacker than the attacked.

Read more here: http://www.northstarwriters.com/lk041.htm

by Alan Hurwitz/North Star Writers Group

Our beloved Democrats finally have the opportunity to bring this country back from the Stone Age and seem intent on blowing it.

Hillary Clinton is the main culprit – making it clear she will do anything to win, including risking her Democratic opponent and party, not to mention the “issues I care about so deeply about”.

She accuses her ”potential running mate” of being unqualified as commander-in-chief – providing a key sound bite for John McCain’s campaign. Assuming Barack Obama is the nominee (most likely), or that she somehow wins and really asks him to be her running mate, “Senator Clinton, how can you in good conscience advocate someone for president who cannot protect our country? Were you lying then or are you lying now?” Ugh!

Samantha Power lets slip out during a supposedly off-the-record interview that she considers Hillary a “monster”. Welcome to amateur night with the UK press. Geraldine Ferraro counters by accusing Obama of being black. So there!

Read more here: http://www.northstarwriters.com/ah074.htm

by Stephen Silver/North Star Writers Group

One of the brightest stars in American politics has wrecked his career thanks to recklessness and stupidity. Eliot Spitzer, the man who looked like a transformative figure in New York politics, and possibly even a future presidential contender, has now left the office of governor of New York after only 13 months, thanks to a prostitution scandal. 

The scandal and its aftermath are shocking for many reasons – from the sudden fall of a rising political star to the sordidness of all the details to the hypocrisy angle, as a man who went after the bad guys with vigor but turned out to be not such a great guy himself.

Unlike anyone in politics since Rudy Giuliani, Spitzer built his image as that of a tough-as-nails prosecutor who, as New York’s two-term attorney general, rode a series of successful convictions and enforcement actions into higher office. As a result, Spitzer was as reviled on Wall Street as any political figure in recent memory. And the Street certainly rejoiced at his departure, for a few days anyway, until the near-collapse of Bear Stearns quickly reclaimed their attention. Regardless, Spitzer most likely can’t count on a post-gubernatorial job with Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch.

Read more here: http://www.northstarwriters.com/ss087.htm

by Candace Talmadge/North Star Writers Group

Do you know what kind of food your local school cafeteria is serving? Your nearby hospital or grandparent’s nursing home?

It’s probably standard U.S. institutional fare: Not much in the way of fresh, local fruits and veggies, and sorely lacking in nutritional value because it’s laced with substances (like partially hydrogenated oils, also known as trans fats, or high-fructose corn syrup) not found naturally in produce or meats.

Yes, I have railed against laws like the one New York City passed mandating the removal of all trans fats from the food served in the city’s restaurants. It was the element of compulsion I objected to, not the removal of the fats themselves. I try to avoid trans fats in foods whenever I can as a matter of responsible personal choice, not because someone orders me to do so or orders others to do so on my behalf. I insist on being treated like an adult.

Read more here: http://www.northstarwriters.com/ct085.htm