he war against Iraq is now a done deal. Casting ballots last night, the voters showed virtually no opposition to attacking Saddam Hussein, instead reinforcing the congressional approval for President Bush's military aims and sending yet another signal to the United Nations to move or get lost.

For politicians in both parties, the steady Republican gains clearly signaled the Democrats would not get revenge for Al Gore's loss in Florida two years ago. In his home state of Texas, the president was unassailable. Bush may have squeaked into office in 2000, but this election shows people like him. It also showed war can submerge domestic scandal, whether political or economic. The Clinton Dems liked to say, "It's the economy, stupid." Not when there's talk of war, it's not.

For their part, the Democrats, led by the Clinton-era centrists, turned their party into Bush lookalikes, heavy on jingoism and light on fiscal responsibility. Without the fluke return of New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg, the Republican control of the Senate would be even more conclusive. This election may seem to indicate listless drift, but it reaffirms the conservative majority. In tone, it takes us back to the Eisenhower '50s.

On the home front, Republican control of the Senate goes a long way toward removing the Democratic rear-guard action against Bush's right-wing judicial appointees. Up to now, the Democrats have blocked these nominations. The one barrier to the administration's steady encroachment on civil rights has been a handful of federal district and appellate judges. Those jurists are about to get some mighty conservative company.

Reform of the federal courts has been the single most important goal of the right-wing Republicans since Ronald Reagan. During his presidency, Reagan and the New Right suffered a crushing defeat when conservative Robert Bork failed to win Senate approval for a Supreme Court position. But that defeat led only to a redoubling of the Republican resolve. Today the Supreme Court is safely in conservative hands. Some say that dominance allowed them to pick the current president. Now they'll extend that reach, making decisions large and small to steer democracy down the course of their choosing.

With a conservative congress, the right-wing administration has the green light to reorganize and rewrite constitutional safeguards of civil rights under the regimen of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Certain federal judges have blocked outright or dragged their feet on letting the administration go ahead with unfettered search and seizure, not to mention imprisonment without a hearing or even charges let alone trial. They've tried to force the administration to follow the rule of law in dealing with hundreds of 9-11 detainees. A Republican majority means that kind of safeguard will soon be history.

Dark stormclouds of sadness and pain passed over the collective soul of the United States and indeed much of the universe today as the Republican Party won control of American government and will hence have much less trouble passing more invidious laws that further its adorably sniveling and very, very mean-spirited agenda of war, big business, corporate inbreeding, heartlessness, artlessness, cultural degradation, homophobia, misogyny, racism, fear, dread, gluttony, and uptight sexless puling about everything that doesn't gibe with rich whitebread Americana doctrines of money and power or vague karmic misery and sneering fear of anyone who makes less than six figures or has genuine orgasms or really loves the environment or personal freedom or alternative viewpoints or laughter. "Hail Satan!" giggled a heavily shellacked Elizabeth Dole as she stepped into Jesse Helms' crusty, moldy, homophobic pink slippers. "Let the Dark Days begin!" --Mark Morford, SF Chronicle

by Anthony Hendricks

Welcome to Independent Central! It’s Wednesday morning November 6, 2002 and the results are in. Only 40% of the populace went to vote, and that minority agreed to retain the Un-elected Regime and give unmitigated power to George W. Bush, who never saw a tax cut he didn’t like, or an evironment he didn’t want to plunder. The Bush Regime had no real opposition in the race. The voter’s choice amounted to Republican or Republican- Light formerly known as the Democratic Party. This referendum on the one party system of governance proved that the majority of voters continue to vote no confidence in the government and the one party system of rule in America.

Some of you may wonder when the Democratic Party gave up standing for anything. Although it’s been a long slide into purgatory, I want to highlight a few moments in recent history that demonstrate their stellar strategy of standing for Nothing. Let me return you to a not so distant event, the year 2000, the place, the televised debates between Al Gore and George ‘the Affable’ Bush. Al Gore repeatedly said, “I agree with my worthy opponent.” For us Independent Voters, that kind of campaign strategy certainly worked. The first question that pops into an Independent Voter’s mind is, so why vote for Al Gore. The answer was obvious: No Reason!

Then of all things, Al Gore still wins the election. Except for one tiny glitch. The Corrupt Florida Election & The Corrupt Supreme Court which stopped the vote counting. What did the Democrats do? Nothing. They could have led a National Voter Rebellion to see that the Constitution was upheld, and that the majority that voted for Al Gore (50.6 million people) actually were represented. Instead they agreed to stand for nothing again. So why bother to vote for a Democrat? Then following 9/11, Al Gore went around saying, “He’s my President!” Made me want to barf. After all I took the trouble to write the Rehnquist Five to protest their gutting of the Constitution, and asked them to resign. No Reply! Then I wrote a satiric protest of selection 2000, Democracy Bushwhacked, Election 2000, Florida Theater of the Absurd (available at www.amazon.com), now a collector’s item, representing an esoteric piece of political memorabilia. In spite of that, I couldn’t get the time of day from the likes of “The Nation” that magazine in which at least 50% of the articles are incomprehensible to us mere mortals, or “The Progressive” which used to be. They summarily rejected the article I submitted following the 2000 Selection, “Enter The Twilight Zone, American Political No Man’s Land.” Detailing the failure of the two party system, that article never saw the light of day, but it got a huge response from my writers’ groups. I suppose these two venerable magazines of Pseudo-Liberalism were voting their pocket books; that being that the majority of their readership could be defined as Liberal Democrat. In this Country, at one point, they used to hang out signs, ‘Irish Need Not Apply.’ Now it’s ‘Independents Need Not Apply.’

Following Selection 2000, the Democrat’s take action plan consisted of blaming Ralph Nader and the Greens. In the 2002 election in Minnesota as of 11:00 A.M EST, 41,372 Independents voted for an Independent, 9,228 voted Green and 2,083 voted CST (whatever that is) thus handing the Senate to the Republican Coleman. Now the Dems can add Independents to their blame list. Evidently, looking in the mirror hasn’t occurred to them.

The Democrats have run for years, as the other guys, “Vote for us they whisper, we’re not as bad as the Republicans.’ Well the votes in, most voters can’t distinguish between the two parties and recognize voting in America for what it is: A hollow, meaningless, passion play, full of bombastic rhetoric, signifying nothing. Thank you Wild Bill Shakespeare for your able assistance.

Now that the final curtain has come down on The One Party, Pretending To Be A Two Party System, maybe we can get around to growing a party that actually represents the main stream of this country. I ask Democrats who remember when their party used to stand for Populist Constitutional Values and the Declaration of Independence to work to form a party that will actually represent those values in Governance. Don’t continue in Denial, stop beating the dead, that Donkey is long gone, that ass has passed beyond revival. Time to get a new ride!

(Anthony Hendricks has written two books, A Journey In The Human Dilemma, Living A Koan, collected poetry and prose, and the political satire, Democracy Bushwhacked, Election 2000, Florida Theater of the Absurd.) Both books are available at www.amazon.com.

Tony and Darlene live in the woods with their two cats, and have a beautiful grandson Dylan.

By Bernard Weiner, www.CrisisPapers.org

Now, THAT was fun! The liberals never knew what hit 'em. Clueless, those guys.

But, based on our polling and focus groups, your's truly knew weeks ago. That's why I could safely send George out on the hustings for that last-minute pick-me-up to the GOP troops. (The Prez wasn't happy about having to work, and disrupting his nap patterns, but he sure appreciates my plan now.)

The boy genius rides again. Sure feels good. I needed to redeem myself big time after blowing the Jim Jeffords thing, which threw our whole agenda into disarray.

But now it's clear sailing. Thank you, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We rode those bogeymen into the sunset. I was worried that maybe we were too obvious and the electorate might see through what we were doing. But no worry; by playing up the possibility of new terror attacks and the evil Saddam, the fear factor worked, and the American citizenry marched in lockstep, giving us whatever we wanted.

Our friends in the media kept all that sinking-economy news off the front pages, and all our scandals as well (I loved the way I orchestrated Harvey Pitt's resignation, dropped right into the election coverage and nobody even noticed), and then, thank you Lord!, the D.C. sniper came along and dominated the news cycles for several weeks just before the vote. And he was even named "Muhammed"! Couldn't have asked for a better script.

And the best part was that the Dems didn't know what to do. They were so unbelievably disspirited and disorganized. They wanted to slam us on the Iraq issue but couldn't or they'd risk revealing themselves for the unpatriotic wimps they are, so a lot felt obliged to vote with us. When key Dem leaders like Daschle and Gephardt and Feinstein and Kerry voted with us, I knew the election was in the bag.

Those stupid liberals had no unified program to offer in opposition to ours -- and, what's more important, no balls. The September 11 events are still working their magic for us, just as we thought they would. (And now, given the election results, we can be assured that there will be no independent investigation of our behavior. We're home free!)

Well, sure, we've still got to work with the Dems in the Senate, who could, if they decide they're going to put up a fight, cause trouble for our legislation. But, I think we can roll enough of them to get the required 60 votes when we have to.

We'll get our judges approved, we'll get the tax cut made permanent for our friends, we'll change the composition of the Supreme Court (goodbye, Roe v. Wade!), ANWAR here we come with our drilling rigs, and on to Baghdad. (If we really want to go there; we don't need to now. We could get the U.N. inspectors in there and finesse our way out of having to invade.)

The added bonus of our electoral sweep is that we're in good shape for the 2004 race. Jeb's in place, and Liddy might be a dynamite partner for George. A Bush-Dole ticket! Now, that's brilliant! We'll carve the womens' vote away from the Dems. They can keep the Jews and the blacks and Arabs. The Dems ain't goin' anywhere for a long time. We're in like Flynn for at least six more years, with Jeb to follow.

We've got the Congress, we've got the White House, we've got the Supreme Court, we've got the media in our pockets. And all the Dems have to oppose us is a few predictable malcontents, an insignificant peace movement (which we can always ruin with some of our undercover guys engineering something ), and some wackos writing on the internet.

Given our election sweep, Ashcroft can take care of all those traitors without having to look over his shoulder all the time. John is so happy; he was smarting about having lost to a dead man in the last election, but the Carnahan widow is no more.

Of course, it's possible that we've stirred up a hornet's nest and the Dems will be galvanized to reorganize themselves into a true opposition. (Gephardt probably will resign as House Minority Leader -- I don't blame him: Nobody wants to have to do daily battle against that obnoxious, but effective, buzzsaw Tom Delay).

But I doubt it. They're too frightened and scattered, and they just don't have the troops behind them in the electorate to give them courage. Nor do they have a real leader; Daschle and Gephardt abdicated when they voted for the Iraq war. Wellstone could have been the rally-around guy, but, sorry for him great for us, he's gone.

No need to worry. We're in the driver's seat for the next six years, and probably beyond, and our political enemies are just going to have to get used to it. If not, we'll destroy them totally. This is going to be so much fun! #

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., is co-editor of the new online political site CrisisPapers.org , has taught American politics and international relations at San Diego State and Western Washington Universities, and was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years.

No retreat, no surrender

By Jackson Thoreau

OK. I admit I was depressed late Tuesday night when I saw the vote totals in the U.S. Senate races in Missouri, Minnesota, and Texas going against the good side, or the lesser of two evils. I admit when Republicanazis taunted me in their emails to me and their posts on the message boards of AOL, Yahoo, and others that I regularly haunt, I returned their fire with even greater insults and profanity that some would call immature.

But dammit, sometimes those cuss words describe your mood so well it would be downright hypocritical NOT to use them. And I won’t apologize for insulting Republicanazis, who spent the entire eight years of good times under President Clinton doing likewise to the better side.

So when an AOL "volunteer message board leader" named Steph sent me an email last night informing me that "our community has certain standards of conduct for members to follow" and that my to-the-point post – I finally got tired of long-winded comebacks and just posted a "FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANAZIS!!!!!" on the AOL message board [Steph’s message to me even included the heading, "Subject: Re: America spoke and said…" then a copy of my "FU" retort, as if "America" issued such a message] – was deemed "inappropriate" and removed to "avoid disruption to the message board discussion," and that "depending on the severity of the disruption, a report may have been submitted to AOL's Community Action Team for further review," – man, those AOL nazis have me quaking in my boots now – I had to respond with this:

"You let the republicanazis use whatever profanity they want – I have seen them use whore and slut and bastards and bitches and more.....You AOL nazis are pathetically partisan!"

And Steph replied back, "If you have questions or concerns about a post that was removed, you can contact screen name LDRS News Boards where a supervisor will respond to your question or comment." And I have done so, believe me, to whatever little avail.

I kept busy on The Day After answering such email with in-your-face retorts. I found it to be good therapy in dealing with the nightmare of Tuesday night. The sun shined in Texas on Wednesday, but I didn’t feel like going for a walk or bike ride with my young son [don’t worry, he had mom and grandma to entertain him]. I wanted to answer each and every one of those smug, arrogant emails sent to me by Republicanazis to try to get my goat. I wanted to show them that Tuesday night and the previous years had not defeated me. I wanted to get to the bottom of what went wrong on Nov. 5, 2002, and figure out what we can do right – or left.

Some of the emails are more ominous than others. One "compassionate conservative" calls me an "ASSHOLE" and warns that "I'm going to fucking find out your information and hunt you down like a dog, so your corpse rots in some sewer system with a .38 slug in your braincase." Another says in all caps: "NEXT EMAIL WILL COST YOU. YOUVE BEEN WARNED, HOMO LOVER."

Another simply writes: "You are a nutcase." So I write back, "Why am I a nutcase? You know nothing about me....Who are the HELL are you???" The woman writes back, "Please omit profanity! Confirms that you are a nut case." I reply, "Hell is not profanity. It's in your bible. Here's something a Bush-ass-kissing conservative like you might enjoy [ass is also in your bible]." And I send her a previous Fight the Right column I wrote. Her son writes back, calling me a "moronic ostrich." He warns, "This has the potential of becoming very personal and you would not enjoy the experience."

So it goes.

Other Republicanazis criticize me for using the word "nazi" against them, saying it somehow demeans what the German nazis stood for, a response that bewilders me. One even adds, "As my brilliant chinese engineering professor used to say about democrats when i was in college, ‘yoh peepoh ah sooooooooooooo stoopit.’ As i say today, ‘yoh peepoh still fit the bill.’" I write back, "Oh yeah, you republicanazis are ones to talk. You and rush limbaugh and other dittoheads have gone around calling feminists ‘feminazis’ for years." And I add to the one who included the demeaning poke at Asian-Americans: "Typical republicanazi – you try to insult me and end up further displaying your racism." No response.

So it goes.

There are times when I have spent hours at this exercise. I’m not sure why. Should I just ignore these Republicanazis and hope they go away? Has that ever worked in the last century? Now, they control the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the governor houses, the Supremely Unjust Court, the media, the CIA, the other "intelligence" agencies, the FBI, etc. Has ignoring Republicanazis stopped them from gaining such control? Has responding stopped them? Tough questions.

At some point, I have to ask other questions. How does a Republicanazi win as governor in Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, and other Northeastern states I thought bled Democratic? How does a Republicanazi senator easily win in New Mexico and Oregon, Western states that went for Gore in 2000? For that matter, how does a Democratic senator easily win in Montana, which overwhelmingly was in the bad side’s pouch in 2000? Are there some deeper, more sinister forces at work here, who want us to fight each other while they run off with the family jewels? Is the Illuminati more than a conspiratorial video game?

Republicanazi dirty tricks and fraud sure continued unabated from 2000. In the final days of the campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry – who Bush hand-picked as his successor – Perry, whose advisors include Bush babysitter Karen Hughes, ran commercials trying to link Democratic candidate Tony Sanchez to murderous drug dealers from Mexico. The ads reinforced racial stereotypes and helped convince all the redneck racists in Texas to vote against Sanchez. Republicanazi ads against other Democrats wrongly portrayed them as liberals, a kiss-of-death label in Texas politics. The damage was done. The Republicanazis even threw in some weird glitches in voting machines in three of Texas’ largest counties – including instances in which votes for Democrats are recorded for Republicanazis - that cause counting delays. [Some reported the same thing happening in other parts of the country, such as Florida.] In another large Texas county, Democrats filed a lawsuit accusing election workers of intimidating certain absentee voters. And Republicanazis claimed victory on TV even before all votes were counted.

In Maryland, Florida, and perhaps other states, fliers were handed out in minority communities telling them the wrong day to vote. Some wrongly informed them that they would have to pay parking tickets and even their rent before they would be allowed to vote. How many uninformed potential Democrats stayed home, not wanting to risk being arrested or worse, as Republicanazis won in those states?

In Minnesota, probably the most liberal Democratic senator died a few days before the election in a mysterious plane crash. The so-called independent governor – who is really a Republicanazi – said he would appoint a Democrat to the seat in the interim, then made a big fuss about some Democrats urging others to carry on Sen. Wellstone’s work during the memorial service, calling it a partisan show. Did he make such a fuss when Republicanazis turned Nixon’s funeral into a partisan, Amway-like rally? No, he decided to "punish" Democrats by naming a no-name "independent" to Sen. Wellstone’s seat. And thousands of "independent" Minnesota voters sided with their "independent" governor – whose office issued a ruling benefiting Republicanazis on absentee ballots a few days before that looked like it came from the White House – and voted for the Republicanazi on election day.

In Missouri, where two years earlier, the Democratic Senator-to-be died in another suspicious plane crash, voters elected the Republicanazi. Earlier, Missouri Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt issued rules about voter eligibility that Democrats said were designed to keep certain Democrats from voting.

The reports continue; they are too many to document here. In New Jersey and Arkansas, Republicanazis went before state supreme courts to try to thwart Democrat requests. In Illinois, a mother and daughter working as Republicanazi election judges in the March primary were indicted on vote fraud charges for allegedly spoiling 66 ballots.

So it goes.

What should our response to Nov. 5, 2002, be? More than 200 years ago, our forefathers and forefathers took up arms against a dictatorial regime. Despite all the evidence, I still think there are more non-violent, legal ways to fight back. In 1984-85, I marched more than 5,000 miles across this damn country and Europe to raise awareness about – and protest against - the Reagan administration’s mad policies that took us to the brink of a nuclear war with the former Soviet Union. Reagan officials and other government officials had to meet with us, after all the national, international, and local media that stunt received. We also met thousands of voters who we made think about such policies. There are such marches going on now against the Bush regime’s plans.

In the Dallas area the day before the election, Bush and other Republicanazis rallied in a univeristy arena. Several Texas Republicanazi speakers said they were happy to see a "Republican rain" that would keep people from voting, thinking a low turnout would help them and lending more evidence to the claim that Republicanazis don’t want people to vote. As Bush addressed the crowd, some infiltrators unveiled a banner objecting to Bush’s blood-for-oil, impending invasion of Iraq. Their message and their yells against Bush made the TV cameras and big-city daily newspapers.

Greenpeace is an organization that stages quite creative protests against harmful environmental policies, such as dumping tons of coal on a D.C. street to protest Bush-Cheney’s energy plan. They get noticed. Some are stunts, but they are mostly effective.

Creativity is on our side. We can come up with off-beat, effective ways to legally protest the Bush administration that will get noticed. We can try to convince a moderate Republican senator to defect as Sen. Jeffords did last year. We can ask a state - perhaps independent Vermont - to secede from the United States to form its own progressive country as a deeper protest, and then move there to help develop a truly democratic country. The key is to keep the other side guessing, to keep them on their toes. The key is to not get down. The key is to take some action.

With a young family, I cannot always break free to infiltrate a Republicanazi team meeting to stage a protest. But I try creative ways to register my protests through my computer. I write columns and letters, I post, I chat, I keep coming back through different names when right-wing sites evict me. A few weeks before the election, I got my sarcastic "Top ten reasons to vote Republican this November" posted to the Free Republicanazi web site. It was on there for more than an hour before being taken down, my personal record on that site.

The freepers even helped me distribute that column, as they sent it out to others in their can-you-believe-this-guy? rage. Someone sent me a response by someone who said, "The minute you quoted Jackson Thoreau the post was moot. It would be similar to me quoting Limbaugh or Hannity. A wall immediately goes up on both sides, my side as well as yours. Why? Because all 3 are biased." Though I am certainly not in Limbaugh’s or Hannity’s leagues - thank God - I consider it a badge of honor to even be referred to in this way. I have only been writing these Internet columns and such for a couple of years, since Bush & Co. stole the White House. You think one person can’t make a difference? Think again.

My response to what occurred on Nov. 5, 2002, is the same one I had when I was walking 5,000 miles and came upon obstacle after bloody obstacle. I will find a way to keep walking, to keep working against the Republicanazi regime. I am still as angry about the stolen 2000 election as I was the day I seethed through Al Gore’s concession speech. I still think Gore should not have conceded and should have fought the Supreme Court ruling, rather than give up and make a concession speech. Sure, the Republicanazis would have found some other way to subvert our vote-counting process. But they would KNOW they were in a fight. And the Democratic Party would emerge with more respect, as a party that did not concede when it knew it was right.

We all have to find our own way to deal with this present, gloomy situation staring at us. My path is not the only one. Find your own. Follow it. Keep fighting the good fight against the Republicanazis, strongly but without physical violence.

No retreat.

No surrender.

Jackson Thoreau is co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. The 110,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Fight the Right Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html or on Citizens for Legitimate Government’s site at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html. Thoreau can be emailed at jacksonthor@justice.com.

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