Homeland Secure and Not So Sure

consortiumnews.com

Republican RICO-Style Abuse of Power

By Stephen Crockett
March 21, 2007

Editor's Note: George W. Bush is rejecting Democratic calls for sworn testimony by his White House inner circle about the unusual firings of eight U.S. Attorneys who were viewed as not "loyal Bushies," according to one Justice Department e-mail. But what might the Democrats find if the officials did testify openly and under oath?

In this guest essay, Democratic Talk Radio co-host Stephen Crockett suggests that underlying Bush's resistance to a full investigation is evidence of longstanding criminality that borders on racketeering:
There is nothing as corrupt as using the governmental powers of law enforcement, to selectively prosecute your political enemies and to cover-up criminal behavior by your political organization and allies, while in a position of political power. This situation is the essence of the current scandal concerning the firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush White House.

The Watergate scandal should have taught the Republican Party that this kind of abuse is outside the bounds of acceptable political behavior in American society. Republican activists failed to learn the lessons of Watergate and are now reliving history on issue after issue.

Republican Presidential pardon powers were used to thwart the rule of law and let the Republican political criminal Richard Nixon avoid the jail time he deserved. Republicans should have gone to jail in large numbers doing the Iran-Contra scandals.

In that case, a Republican White House ignored the rule of law. They abused the traditions of normal American political behavior and federal law to impose their minority foreign policy views on an American public opposed to the Republican ideologically based policies. Instead, Presidential pardon powers were abused to help Republican political criminals avoid the jail time they deserved.

The current Bush White House by executive order changed the process on revealing prior Presidential papers to the public early in George W. Bush’s first term in a way that prevented revelation of criminal behaviors concerning Iran-Contra figures. The role of his father, the first George Bush, in the criminal behavior concerning of Iran-Contra remains unexplored. The executive order may violate the Presidential Papers Act.

At issue is Republican Presidential politics influencing potential criminal investigations and prosecutions. The current Republican White House has definitely politicized the process of federal law enforcement in a way that corrupts American government.

Unfortunately, they are continuing a long Republican tradition. Republicans seem to view this as politics as usual. It is not! It is corruption and deeply offensive to the real traditions of American government.

Under this Bush, it appears that federal prosecutors have targeted 7 or 8 times more Democratic officeholders than Republican officeholders. The investigations of Democratic state legislators in Tennessee looks politically motivated.

Anyone familiar with Tennessee politics knows that Republican politicians in that state are just as corrupt or corruptible as Democratic ones. The federal government has not investigated the Republican officeholders in Tennessee in the way they have Democrats.

The political strength of Republicans in Tennessee looks to be closely linked to politicized federal law enforcement by the Bush Administration. The Tennessee politicized law enforcement situation appears ripe for investigation.

Criminal investigations of Republican politicians are slowed to a snail pace by politicized appointees in case after case like the New Hampshire phone jamming scandal.

The federal prosecutor who convicted California Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham for corruption was unjustly fired. The federal prosecutor who would not prosecute phony vote fraud charges against Democrats in New Mexico, in time for the 2006 elections as demanded by Republican politicians, was fired.

In 2005, a federal prosecutor investigating criminal charges surrounding the staff of then Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich was fired. The investigation was effectively derailed. This pattern of abuses repeats itself over and over again in state after state.

Unless the Republicans can purge their Party of this criminal tendency to abuse public office and government power for political ends, then Republicans at every level should be voted out of power. Public investigations and investigative journalism should be focused on abuses of office by those in power.

The Republican Party is starting to look like a potential target for a RICO indictment as a profit-making, criminal conspiracy. Their political traditions should be based on American political figures like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt instead of Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney and Tom Delay.

The current Republican Culture of Corruption is a very sad situation for the Party of Lincoln to find itself in at the beginning of the 21st century.

Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio, http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com , Earleville, Maryland. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com

MARS TODAY

NASA sent the two Mars Rovers, Spirit & Opportunity, to the surface of The Red Planet years ago, with the hope they would land safely and move around for a couple of months, taking samples and photographs. Years later and gazillions of photographs and samples later, the two robots from Earth are still at it. Remarkable of itself, it points to a past of liquid water on Mars and a future filled with possibilities no longer in the realm of science fiction. Henry_Allen



March 14, 2007

NASA Mars Rover Churns Up Questions With Sulfur-Rich Soil


This panorama image shows brightly colored soil which was churned up by Spirit on its eastward drive toward the northwestern flank of 'McCool Hill'. This view is an approximately true-color rendering.
While driving eastward toward the northwestern flank of "McCool Hill," the wheels of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit churned up the largest amount of bright soil discovered so far in the mission. This image, taken on the rover's 788th Martian day, or sol, of exploration (March 22, 2006), shows the strikingly bright tone and large extent of the materials uncovered. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

View all related images
Some bright Martian soil containing lots of sulfur and a trace of water intrigues researchers who are studying information provided by NASA's Spirit rover.

"This material could have been left behind by water that dissolved these minerals underground, then came to the surface and evaporated, or it could be a volcanic deposit formed around ancient gas vents," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis. He is the deputy principal investigator for NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Determining which of those two hypotheses is correct would strengthen understanding of the environmental history of the Columbia Hills region that Spirit has been exploring since a few months after landing on Mars in January 2004. However, investigating the bright soil presents a challenge for the rover team, because the loose material could entrap the rover.

The bright white and yellow material was hidden under a layer of normal-looking soil until Spirit's wheels churned it up while the rover was struggling to cross a patch of unexpectedly soft soil nearly a year ago. The right front wheel had stopped working a week earlier. Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., were trying to maneuver the rover backwards, dragging that wheel, to the north slope of a hill in order to spend the southern-hemisphere winter with solar panels tilted toward the sun.

Due to the difficulty crossing that patch, informally named "Tyrone," the team chose to drive Spirit to a smaller but more accessible slope for the winter. Spirit stayed put in its winter haven for nearly seven months. Tyrone was one of several targets Spirit examined from a distance during that period, using an infrared spectrometer to check their composition. The instrument detected small amounts of water bound to minerals in the soil.

The rover resumed driving in late 2006 when the Martian season brought sufficient daily sunshine to the solar panels. Some of the bright soil from Tyrone was dragged to the winter site by the right front wheel, and Spirit spent some time measuring the composition and mineralogy of these materials. The material is sulfur-rich and consists of sulfate salts associated with iron, and likely calcium. "These salts could have been concentrated by hydrothermal liquid or vapor moving through the local rocks," said rover science team member Dr. Albert Yen, a geochemist at JPL. Two other patches of bright soil uncovered by Spirit before Tyrone were also sulfur-rich, but each had similarities to local rock compositions that were different at the three sites, suggesting localized origins.

Researchers will watch for more patches of bright soil. "If we find them along fractures, that would suggest they were deposited at ancient gas vents," Arvidson said. "If they are at the saddles between hills, that would suggest the deposits formed where groundwater came to the surface."

Scientists are describing recent findings by Spirit and Opportunity at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this week in League City, Texas.

Spirit has driven away from the Tyrone area for a clockwise circuit around a plateau called "Home Plate." Researchers want to learn more about Home Plate, which Spirit visited briefly in early 2006. They are checking a hypothesis that explosive volcanism, driven by the interaction of magma with water, formed Home Plate and similar features.

Halfway around Mars, Opportunity is exploring clockwise around "Victoria Crater," a bowl about 800 meters (half a mile) across. Cliff-like promontories alternate with more gradually sloped alcoves around the scalloped rim. The impact that dug the crater exposed layers that had been buried.

"The images are breathtaking," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the rovers. "Every promontory we've seen has the kinds of layering expected for ancient wind-blown sand deposits."

The layers consist of sulfate-rich sandstone similar to other bedrock Opportunity has been finding in Mars' Meridiani region for more than three years. The minerals come from a wet period in the region's ancient past. While exploring Victoria's rim with Opportunity, researchers have been on the lookout for rocks that might have been tossed out from layers deeper and older than the sulfates.

"We found one group of cobbles that were clearly more resistant to erosion than the sulfate blocks thrown out onto the rim," Squyres said. "We checked the composition of one that we called Santa Catarina. Our suspicion now is that Santa Catarina is a piece of a meteorite." That would be the fifth meteorite found by the rovers.

More than three years into what was planned as a three-month mission on Mars, both Spirit and Opportunity remain in good health, though with signs of aging. "The team has learned how to drive Spirit very well with just five wheels," said JPL's Dr. John Callas, rover project manager. "We could accomplish longer drives if there were more energy, but Spirit's solar panels have gotten really dusty. We would welcome another wind-related cleaning event." It's about the same time of year on Mars now as it was when winds blew dust off Spirit and its solar panels in 2005, increasing energy output.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

###
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NEWS RELEASE: 2007-029

DYING IN AMERIKA

Protectionism? The ruling class tries to sell "globalism" as "internationalism" instead of imperialism. Slowly, America becomes the Thrd World, while the Third World remains, essentially, a two-class society. Henry_Allen

Outcry' over Halliburton's planned move to Dubai

The news that Halliburton will move its headquarters from Houston to Dubai, "immediately sparked criticism from U.S. members of Congress," CBS News reports.

"This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement.

At Time's Swampland, Karen Tumulty says House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., will likely hold hearings on Halliburton's plan.

"I want to understand the ramifications for U.S. taxpayers and national security," Waxman said, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The Houston Chronicle reminds us that:

"At least for the moment, Halliburton is not just an oil-field services firm. Through its KBR subsidiary, Halliburton also is the Pentagon's largest private contractor operating in Iraq. Under a logistics contract with the Army valued at more than $25 billion, KBR serves up meals, builds bases and provides other support services for U.S. troops."

The company does plan to spin off KBR "into a separate entity," however, the Chronicle writes.

Dubai, of course, was in the middle of controversy last year when a company based there struck a deal to buy operations at six U.S. ports. There was an outcry from Democrats and others concerned about national security.

At the liberal Huffington Post, Raymond J. Learsy writes that "maybe we should simply bid good riddance to Halliburton. But somebody on Capitol Hill should look into their continuing registration as a United States company."

Crush Liberalism, though, thinks the company may be most interested in getting away from the "tax-oppressive U.S."

For its part, Halliburton says "the opening of a headquarters in Dubai is the next step in a strategic plan announced in 2006 to focus on expanding its customer relations with national oil companies while concentrating more of the company’s investments and resources in growing its business in the Eastern Hemisphere."

Halliburton is, of course, the company that Vice President Cheney ran before becoming the GOP vice presidential candidate in July 2000.
Posted at 02:13 PM/ET, March 12, 2007 in Mideast, Politics, Washington

We Can't Find Him

consortiumnews.com

Afghanistan's 'Hard Mission' Slips Away

By Richard L. Fricker
March 10, 2007

Canadian lawmakers have written an Afghanistan version of the Iraq Study Group report, reaching a conclusion that the conditions on that original battlefront in the “war on terror” are grave and deteriorating.

The 16-page Canadian Senate report, entitled “Taking a Hard Look at a Hard Mission,” foresees a conflict that could drag on for generations and might well fail unless NATO significantly increases its commitment of money and troops.

“It is in our view doubtful that this mission can be accomplished given the limited resources that NATO is currently investing in Afghanistan,” said the report by the Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. “The current NATO contingent doesn’t have enough troops to go toe-to-toe with the Taliban.”

Former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander told the committee that it would take five generations to “make a difference in Afghanistan,” while Land Forces Commander Andrew Leslie estimated that it would take at least two decades to complete the mission.

NATO has roughly 32,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 15,000 Americans and 2,500 Canadians. Another 12,000 American troops under U.S. command conduct missions ranging from counter-terrorism to training Afghan forces.

In 2001 after the 9/11 attacks were blamed on al-Qaeda operatives based in Afghanistan, the United States led an invasion of the rugged country, toppling its Taliban government and trapping many al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, in the mountains of Tora Bora along the Pakistani border.

At that crucial moment in December 2001, however, President George W. Bush failed to deploy adequate U.S. military forces to capture bin Laden, who managed to escape on horseback with some of his key lieutenants into Pakistan.

Bush then redirected the attention of the U.S. military and intelligence services toward Iraq in preparation for the invasion on March 19, 2003. Since then, the conflict in Iraq has absorbed the bulk of U.S. military resources and political attention.

Al-Qaeda Resurgence

Over those past five years, al-Qaeda has regrouped in the mountains of Pakistan and the Taliban has reemerged as a potent force inside Afghanistan, where NATO forces are anticipating a fierce spring offensive by Taliban fighters. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Is Losing the War on Terror."]

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan has ratcheted up political and military pressure on America’s NATO allies who had expected their Afghan deployments to concentrate mostly on peacekeeping and reconstruction, not fighting a major counterinsurgency war.

U.S. aerial assaults also have killed substantial numbers of civilians and thus deepened Afghani resentment of Westerners. That local anger and the broader fury in the Muslim world over the Iraq War have attracted a flow of Islamic militants to Afghanistan as well as to Iraq.

When Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting a U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Feb. 27, a Taliban fighter blew himself apart at the gate of the base, killing 23 people but not directly endangering Cheney. The attack, however, was a reminder of the Taliban’s determination to challenge the presence of Westerners on Afghan territory.

“The Afghans are holding elections in their own minds as to whether or not the Westerners can provide the wherewithal to make life better or let the Taliban come back; at least they are predictable,” Canadian Committee Chairman Colin Kenny told me. “We have a very short window of time in which to show them we can assist them.”

Dawn Black, a member of the House of Commons and the New Democratic Party’s voice on defense and security issues, also expressed doubts about assurances from Canada’s Conservative government regarding what it calls generally positive trends in the conflict.

“The government says things are improving,” Black told me. “I was there last month. The security situation is such that they didn’t feel it was safe enough for us to leave the air base” at Kandahar.

When the Canadian delegation did visit an encampment of Afghans “just beyond the wire, the people are starving,” Black said.

Black also complained that heavy-handed military tactics have alienated the Afghani population and set back the goal of winning hearts and minds.

“How are you winning the hearts and minds of these people when you drive a tank through their farms?” Black said. “The NDP would like to see Canada withdraw from the combat mission.”

Election Chances

Canada’s Senate national security committee is dominated by Liberals and Conservatives, but the NDP could play a pivotal role in future Canadian policy in Afghanistan, especially if the Conservative minority government of Stephen Harper is forced into a new election.

Harper, a staunch ally of President Bush, is struggling in opinion polls, dragged down in part by the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. If neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals can win a clear electoral victory, the NDP could be the power broker deciding who will form the next Canadian government. [For more on the politics, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Canadian Clone in Jeopardy."]

Harper has proposed an additional $200 million aid package that would go to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai despite concerns over widespread corruption. Sen. Kenny, a Liberal, questioned the wisdom of pouring money into that black hole.

“Canadians will not be able to see how their tax dollars are being spent,” Kenny told me. “I think there will be a lot of money going to a number of people to enhance their Swiss bank accounts. Perhaps some of it will get through to the Afghan people.”

The committee report, released in February, recommended redirecting aid through the military to ensure that more of the money actually reaches the population.

Overall, the report saw few bright spots.

“Anyone expecting to see the emergence in Afghanistan within the next several decades of a recognizable modern democracy capable of delivering justice and amenities to its people is dreaming in Technicolor,” the report said.

“The three primary forces in Afghan politics [are] armed power, tribal loyalties and corruption,” the report said. “Eliminating corruption in a place like Afghanistan is probably a pipe dream. …

“Any attempts to centralize control are complicated by the fact that Afghanistan’s economy is almost totally dependent on the sale of opium, and the opium marketplace is controlled by the warlords and, increasingly, the Taliban.”

The Canadian senators made little effort to sugarcoat the challenges ahead.

“The Taliban have time and geography on their side,” the report said. “Afghanistan is considerably more backward than other difficult areas like Iraq, Iran and Palestine. Whatever changes are made here are going to take many generations to effect and any early reforms are unlikely to present Canadians with the kinds of successes that might easily be seen to justify our involvement in Afghanistan.”

The report summed up the local situation by saying, “People outside Kabul are generally far more dependent on their traditional Sharia courts and systems of government than they are on the central government. …While NATO is proud of the fact that national elections have taken place, these elections have proven to be all but irrelevant to Afghans in places like Kandahar.”

The committee also took the Canadian International Development Agency to task for insisting “that it has a number of development projects underway in the province, but no one was able to show us.”

Beyond the lack of proof that Canada’s commitment was improving the lives of Afghans, the report noted that “life is clearly more perilous because we are there. That doesn’t mean that Canada shouldn’t be there…but it does mean that the ordinary citizen of Kandahar is living in a war zone that he or she wouldn’t be living in if NATO troops weren’t there.

“The combination of too many innocent lives being lost and too little development assistance coming through the pipeline contributes to making life bleak and dangerous.”

More Troops

While noting that “we cannot succeed in Afghanistan at the point of a bayonet,” the report said security for the population required more troops on the ground. “Some of our allies are doing a lot of saluting, but not much marching,” the report said.

“We don’t need F-18’s; we need boots on the ground,” Sen. Kenny told me, adding that some European allies are reluctant to give more help to the United States in Afghanistan because of objections to U.S. policies in Iraq and in the “war on terror.”

“Europe is getting back at the U.S. because of the failed Iraq policy and the loss of moral high ground because of Gitmo, renditions, etc.,” Kenny said.

The Canadian report faulted Germany and France for not supplying troops and more assistance. It also noted that after the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989, the United States “largely abandoned the Afghans” leaving them to the mercy of the Taliban.

Prime Minister Harper reacted to the critical report much the way President Bush responded to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s recommendations for a phased withdrawal from Iraq – Harper brushed the bad news aside and made clear he would push ahead with an escalation of the old policy.

Unlike Bush, however, Harper may have to face the voters in the near future. Asked if Afghanistan could be an election issue in the months ahead, Sen. Kenny responded, “It very well could.”

HITCHCOCK WAS RIGHT

"The Birds"
Posted by: SaRuMaN Mar 8 2007, 12:53 PM

user posted image rThe distinction between birds and the dinosaurs from which they evolved is getting even murkier. The genomes (complete DNA sequences) of both groups are short, researchers now say.Scientists used to think that relatively shorter genomes were associated with flight. Birds have short genomes compared to other vertebrates, or animals with backbones—the average bird genome length is a measly 1.45 billion base pairs. Bats also have short genomes—about 2.25 billion base pairs. Humans genomes are another billion base pairs longer. Also, flightless birds tend to have longer genomes than flying birds. But the new finding by Chris Organ of Harvard University and his colleagues complicates this thinking and shows that the shorter genomes of birds originated in saurischian dinosaurs, the group of dinosaurs from which birds evolved and that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. So rather than being a characteristic of birds or flying animals, short genomes should be thought of as a characteristic of dinosaurs, including the killer theropod dinosaurs, he said. "Birds just inherit that character like they have inherited other dinosaurian traits, like feathers," Organ told LiveScience. Scientists once thought that feathers, nesting and parental care also were features just of birds, but all three of these characteristics have now also been identified in non-avian dinosaurs.

Most genome-length studies have focused only on living animals, which make up only about 1 percent of all animal species that have ever existed on Earth. Organ and his colleagues brought in a comparison with 31 extinct dinosaur species by relying on a well-known relationship between cell size and genome size. Bigger cell sizes are correlated with longer genomes. The team was able to generate estimates of the genome lengths of the dinosaurs by measuring the corresponding bone-cell sizes from the collection of Harvard University's Alfred Crompton and the Museum of the Rockies in Montana.They compared these data with genome size estimates for 26 additional living four-limbed animals also made from cell-size observations. Then they generated a family tree that showed how genome length evolved over time. The results showed that the shorter, "bird-sized" genomes (of about 1.8 billion base pairs) evolved in saurischian dinosaurs between 230 and 250 million years ago, long before Archaeopteryx and the other early birds evolved.

linked-image View: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070307_dino_genome.html | Source: http://www.livescience.com

Same Pitch, Same Ditch, Same Conclusion

Democrats to demand troops leave Iraq if benchmarks not met
Posted 3/1/2007 9:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democratic leaders have coalesced around legislation that would require troops to come home from Iraq within six months if that country's leaders fail to meet promises to help reduce violence there, party officials said Thursday.

The plan would retain a Democratic proposal prohibiting the deployment to Iraq of troops with insufficient rest or training or who already have served there for more than a year. Under the plan, such troops could only be sent to Iraq if President Bush waives those standards and reports to Congress each time.

The proposal is the latest attempt by Democrats to resolve deep divisions within the party on how far to go to scale back U.S. involvement in Iraq. Rep. James Moran said the latest version has the support of party leadership and said he believes it is final and has the best chance at attracting broad support.

"We're going to report out" a war spending bill "that's responsive to the will of the voters last November and brings our troops home as soon and safely as possible," Moran, D-Va., said in an interview Thursday.

Moran, a member of the House committee that oversees military spending, said the plan was discussed in a closed-door meeting of committee Democrats on Thursday.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declined to confirm the details and or say whether Pelosi backs the plan. But he said: "We have said we want to make sure our troops have all the training and equipment they need and that the Iraqi government must meet the benchmarks President Bush endorsed."

Bush said the Iraqis had promised to meet certain goals when he offered to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. For example, the Iraqis pledged to spend more money on reconstruction and reach a political agreement to share the nation's oil resources.

If the Iraqis fail to live up to their promises, some troops could be left behind under the Democrats' plan to train Iraqi troops or conduct counterterrorism missions, Moran said.

Bush requested $93.4 billion for this year's military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moran said that as of Thursday, the proposal was on track to add an extra $1 billion to step up efforts in Afghanistan. Money also would be added to improve health care for veterans and help wounded active-duty troops, as well as provide relief for hurricane victims.

The legislation also would require Bush to seek congressional approval for any military operations in Iran.

The Senate, meanwhile, could begin floor debate on Iraq as early as next week. Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., have proposed a resolution that would call for combat troops to come home by March 2008.

As Democrats finalized their spending plan for this year, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten told Senate Republican leaders that the administration will need additional funding to pay for the influx of troops to Iraq.

The Pentagon initially estimated the 21,500 troops would cost $5.6 billion through Oct. 1. But 6,000 more personnel will be needed to provide support to the combat units, according to GOP aides.

The administration also might amend its funding request in order to provide more money for Afghanistan.

The White House is expected to offer to trim other parts of the 2007 war spending request such as the controversial V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft to offset the money needed. Bolten did not offer a specific figure for the support troops, the aides said.

Also on Thursday, an influential Senate Democrat floated the idea of cutting $20 billion from Bush's request for military operations next year in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to be swiftly overridden by his colleagues.

The trial balloon floated by Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad would have trimmed Bush's $142 billion war budget for 2008 by about one-seventh in keeping with cost estimates by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Conrad's idea would have applied to the next budget year beginning Oct. 1 — a separate issue from the debate over Bush's $100 billion request for immediate supplemental war funding.

But it raised concerns among Democrats sensitive to any accusations of shorting funding for troops in battle.

"Our caucus feels strongly that we should go with the president's numbers" on 2008 war costs, Conrad said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Amerika-Not Enuf Orgone Energy

Sex Expert Susie Bright Lets It All Out
By RU Sirius (from 10 Zen Moneyes -- http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/02/22/sex-expert-susie-bright-lets-it-all-out/
February 22nd, 2007

The New York Times called Susie Bright “the avatar of American Erotica.” She was

co-founder and editor of the first Women’s sex magazine, On Our Backs:

Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian, from 1984-1991. Since then, she’s

written and edited about a zillion books, and taught many courses on sexuality.

Currently, she posts regularly on her own blog. Her audio show, In Bed With

Susie Bright, is distributed by Audible.com. She was a sex-scene choreographer

and consultant for the Wachowski Brothers’ first film, Bound, in which she also

had a cameo role.

Susie appeared on two consecutive episodes of The RU Sirius Show, primarily to

discuss the anthology, The Best American Erotica 2007, which includes stories by

Dennis Cooper and the late Octavia Butler, among many others. (She’s been

editing the Erotica series since 1993.) We did, of course, digress quite a bit

from the main topic.

As with the audio interview, we are running these text edits in two segments, so

stay tuned right here for the second half in about a week.

RU Sirius Show co-host Diana Brown joined me in interviewing Susie Bright about

her “Ted Haggard Betting Pool,” teen sex, and other illicit thoughts.



RU SIRIUS: The introduction to The Best American Erotica 2007 is quite an

intense little piece. Would you please read a segment from it?

SUSIE BRIGHT: Sure. I called it “The Lolita Backlash.” Every year, the stories

in the book tend to magnetize to a certain theme. And this year, it had to do

with a rather vicious generation gap.

When was the moment when our youth become self-aware of their charms, as

well as its desperation? It seems younger now, although that could just be my

mother talking. But look at our 21st century culture. Every teenager knows the

time to launch a career as a porn star is in the weeks following high school

graduation. Celebrity journalism shows us that Hercules and Aphrodite will both

be toppled in their early 20s without massive intervention. It’s no wonder the

commodification of good looks and muscles has wrought an erotic backlash.

Virginity. Authenticity. The natural pearl. This is what is idealized today,

as well as commercialized beyond all recognition. Fake sex—titillation— is for

sale; real sex is elusive and underground.

Take this state of affairs, and couple it with a pox of unprecedented

meddling in people’s personal lives by the religious right, and we have a toxic

brew. Privacy, freedom, and nature are gasping for breath. Hypocrites alone have

something to crow about.

In my fifteen years of editing BAE, I have never seen such a yowling,

lustful, spitting breach between young and old.

Of course, such observations are taboo. Lower your voice! Young people

aren’t supposed to have a sexual bone in their bodies, right? And their elders,

if they are immune to beauty, and make all the rules, should be able to keep it

in their pants. What a squawk.

There is so much guilt and fear about the obvious— that young people do have

hormones, and old people aren’t altogether blind—that helpful discussion in the

public sphere has shriveled. It is left to fiction for the truth to come out.

The truth looks like this: any conflict has the potential to become erotic.

That might get complicated, tragic, or unpredictable. Eros is kissing cousins

with aggravation. The conscience of our society drives us to protect our young,

to provide for them, to cheer and cherish their independence. But we wouldn’t

need any conscience if it wasn’t a challenge, if it didn’t demand sacrifice. The

temptations include neglect, exploitation, coercion, and dependence.

RU: So the introduction to your book – and much of the fiction in the book —

broaches the highly taboo subject of adolescent sex; and adolescent sex as it

relates to adults. We had Tim Cavanaugh on the show — he was the editor of

Reason magazine’s blog at the time. I asked him if they’d ever dealt with the

age of consent. And he admitted they hadn’t. It was clear that this is kind of

the third rail for some libertarians. Do you worry about Fox News noticing your

book? I think this is probably a bigger taboo than murder in America now.

SB: How interesting. When I was in my twenties, I was invited on the Phil

Donahue Show. He was sort of Oprah before Oprah.

So I was brought in with a bisexual male friend of mine to represent

bisexuality. We were told we’d talk about what we noticed sexually about the

differences between sleeping with men and sleeping with women. And they made it

sound like it was not pejorative or prejudiced or trying to start a fire — just,

you know, “What do you notice?” And we thought that would be a lot of fun. So we

got picked up in one of those big limos and taken to the studio. And inside the

limo was this very pink, perspiring couple from Florida. And I said, “You’re

going to be on the show too?” And they said, “Yes. We’re from Exodus.” Now

Exodus, at the time, was the premier gay conversion group. So it was one of

those “gotcha” shows.

RU: (Mockingly) Woo-hoo! Gay conversion — it’s coming back!

SB: It’s coming back stronger than ever. They’ve got it down to three weeks now

— a three week spa.

DIANA BROWN: Does it come with a French manicure?

SB: So on Donahue’s show, he basically tried to get the bible couple to freak

out on us – about how we’re heathens — and vice versa. It was so humiliating. We

didn’t talk about anything that I had planned to talk about. And at one point, I

just opened my big mouth and said, “I came of age in the seventies, and I lost

my virginity shortly before my 16th birthday with an unemployed soap opera

actor.

DB: Like you were supposed to in America in the seventies!

SB: Yes! It’s a banal story. Exactly. Everybody did that.

RU: …Since the seventies.

DB: I think it’s in the handbook!

SB: So, all of the sudden Phil turns. He’s thrilled. And he says, “So you were a

victim of child abuse!”

DB: Did he cut to a commercial at that moment?

SB: I just thought, “You son of a bitch.” What a gratuitous dig. And, you know,

neither I nor anybody in my family feels any regrets or fears. It’s not like,

“Gee, Susie was in an awful lot of trouble or panic or danger.” I wasn’t.

Of course, this is a tricky subject and there has to be sensitivity to the

psychological and physical development of young people. And some people are such

old souls so young. And other people are just crawling out of their egg at age

twenty-five. You also have quite a noticeable difference in terms of adolescent

girls and boys. I see my daughter and her friends, and some kind of look ten and

some kind of look twenty-something – and they’re all around sixteen. They are so

different. The ones who suffer the most are the ones who look ten, but

emotionally and mentally they want to do everything. And then you’ll hear about

a girl who had breasts when she was ten, and everyone was sexualizing her. And

she just wanted to climb a tree and be left alone. There are so many

misunderstandings. And adults are constantly projecting their notions of what

they want on them. In my case — and in a lot of cases, I was the one who was

interested and curious and seeking sex.

RU: You hear that story all the time.

DB: Yeah.

SB: Problems come from older people who don’t have empathy and compassion and

respect. You get someone who decides; “Yeah! Girls want me!” (Laughter) “That

teenaged girl over there? She digs me.” That kind of narcissism is the problem.

We don’t even talk about whether the sex in these scenarios is consensual. Is

there coercion involved? What is the power relationship between these people? We

fixate on stereotypes and miss the big picture. And another thing that doesn’t

get brought up is that, overwhelmingly, sexual abuse and that type of violence

happens within families. If you could stop that, it would really be remarkable.

We have this idea, fostered by J. Edgar Hoover, that there are these monsters

out there — strangers are going to come up and offer your child a lollipop. We’

re seeing that replayed now around the internet. There’s a wonderful social

scientist, Michael Males, who just had an opinion article in the New York Times.

He’s proved that your kid is safer alone on MySpace than in any shopping mall in

America. I just loved reading his facts and figures, because it all makes sense

to me.

RU: It seems so obvious, if you think about it.

SB: Yeah, it sure does. And of course, the guy who was running the predator

arrest campaign for Homeland Security was exposing himself to 16-year-old girls

at the mall. I’m not making this shit up! With all the fuss about Scooter Libby

and Cheney, other things have been glossed over.

RU: Were they caught together?

SB: (Laughs) It fascinated me how it came out that officials who are supposedly

in charge of protecting children turn out to be really creepy, totally non-

consensual predators.

RU: Well, they’re the ones who are attracted to that. I mean, just like a

certain percentage of criminal sadists are attracted to law enforcement.

DB: The mice are guarding the cheese.

SB: That’s a good way of putting it. So when people ask me about public policy,

I think about the big picture. If this country had more active democracy; if we

had decent health care and universal sex education, things would be better for

young people. Anything you can do to give them power is going to work out.

Anything you can do to foster good family relationships and support education is

going to help. None of this is on the agenda for the United States right now.

DB: Well, you’re doing something for young people on your web site – the Ted

Haggard Betting Pool. And it’s not just a snarky little jab at this fool Ted

Haggard, who is all over the media. Proceeds of this Betting Pool are going to

benefit a San Francisco youth group called LYRIC.

SB: Yes. LYRIC is a youth group. They do community support and activism for

young people who realize that they’re sexually different, whatever that might

mean to them. And nobody makes you fill out a form to explain yourself. If you

know that you’re sexually different and you want a place where you don’t have to

be alone — and where you don’t have to be stigmatized and shamed — you can go to

them. And you might get support in terms of work and family that you won’t get

elsewhere. They’re role models for young people getting together and doing it

for themselves, while having adult advocates who have a lot of integrity. So I

love them.

And when this whole mess with Reverend Ted Haggard happened… I mean, there you

have the evangelical minister to end all evangelical ministers – the guy who

could tell George Bush what to do – and he gets caught sucking cock on a regular

basis.

RU: On crank.

SB: On crank.

RU: It’s the only way to do it.

SB: No one wants to do it without meth anymore, apparently.

DB: “Cock on crank.” I like the alliteration of it.

SB: And instead of copping to it, he said, “Hey. I was always heterosexual. It

was just stress” — or whatever it was. And his church gave him a huge check,

since they’re hemorrhaging money. He signed a confidentiality agreement and was

given a plane ticket to get out of town. And, of course, now the headlines are

“Ted Haggard says he’s 100% heterosexual.”

DB: Didn’t he go to a three-week spa?

SB: He went to a three-week spa to get over his homosexuality (which he wasn’t

really anyway.) I mean, the contradictions are endless.

RU: I love that. I mean, who’s going into rehab today? It’s become a daily thing

now.

SB: So everyone I know was saying, “When do you think he’ll slip?” So I said,

“Let’s do a betting pool.” So some of us have started Bet on Ted.” You just pick

your date. We’re going to give it a year. Any time this year. And to win,

something has to happen with Ted that gets into the news or into the courts.

We’ve come up with a list of things – all of them involve Ted cracking, and it

hitting a news report. If you have the lucky date, then you win half the pot and

the other half goes to our worthy cause: LYRIC. If nobody gets the right date —

or Ted sneaks by all year and nothing comes out — then the whole pot will go to

LYRIC too. So bet on Ted! I’m hoping we get somewhere with it.

One of my friends who wanted to bet said, “Can we send in a ringer?” And I said,

“Yeah! Make it happen!”

DB: A hooker with a heart of gold that will bring him across.

SB: Exactly!

RU: I bet a lot of people are trying to reel him in, at this point. It’s his

lucky year, now!

DB: We’re Ted fishing, now!

RU: Ted’s going to get a lot of action this year… thanks to Susie Bright.

DB: (Makes a fly-casting sound.) What are we using for bait?

SB: One thing that’s interesting: remember I told you about those founders of

Exodus that I met at the “Donahue Show.” The founders of Exodus finally did do

the right thing. They fled Exodus, so to speak. They exited Exodus and said, “We

are gay, God damn it! We’re sorry we just did this to everybody.” Virtually all

the founders of all these horrible conversion therapies have recanted after a

certain amount of time.

RU: It seems, in the thesis and antithesis of sexual revolution and then

backlash; we’ve ended up in an incredibly tangled state of how we – as a culture

— think about sexuality. We almost embrace the most intense kinds of sexual

sophistication, and there’s all this pornography around, and then there’s the

most intense kinds of Puritanism. And it’s like it’s all converged into one

confused human being.

SB: Well, a lot of that porn is really about titillation and guilt. There’s

this, “Taste me! Taste me!” factor where you never really get to taste me. You

know? “Come closer! I’ll give you this little bit.” But then once you get there,

you’re going to need to get a little bit more… and a little bit more. And you’re

always going to have to shell out. That’s how they sell it. And it’s also how

they inspire political fear. It’s a come-on! It’s a con job. What you don’t get

is sexual honesty and real candor, where you really come through.

RU: They’re creating people who behave that way! The relationship between the

stripper and the paying customer – a lot of people relate to each other that

way.

SB: I suppose so, except with real strippers, real love lives — it doesn’t work

like that. Even if you try to live in a fake persona, you can’t maintain it all

the time. It’s impossible.

RU: There is a lovely story towards the end of the book — “The Wish Girls” —

that gets underneath the emptiness behind those images.

SB: Yeah, that was a great story by a new author – Matthew Addison. His

character is about thirty. When he was a teenager, he had an “I Dream of

Jeannie” moment where he wished there were two hot, bouncy, magazine-y babes who

would appear and be his love slaves. And he got his wish! They’re the wish

girls! Now, they’ve been around for fifteen years, and they do the same exact

positions. And he was naive when he ordered them. And now he thinks, “Why did I

make them identical except for their hair color? I wish one was 5′2″ and one was

5′9”!” It drives him nuts that they’re so limited. He yearns for more, but on

the other hand — they bend over and get in position #19 and position #32 just

like clockwork. And he feels guilty for his boredom and ennui with them. So

what’s in store for him next? Read the story.

RU: On the other hand, there’s another story in there involving some porn stars

and they’re having a pretty interesting time, and their sex is pretty hot and so

forth. Do you feel like there’s a clear dividing line? Can you say, “This is bad

porn; and this is good porn?” I’m suspicious of people judging what gets other

people off.

SB: Well, I never walk into a room and say “(gasp) What!? That turns you on?

You’re gross.” I mean, that would be the infantile…

RU: “Ewwwww.”

SB: When it comes to “good porn” and “bad porn,” you’ll frequently see something

that has obviously been made with the sloppiest intentions: “Fuck it. Let’s get

this done and get a quick buck.” But as you watch it, there will be one 10-

minute scene where the people in front of the camera actually had a moment. And

it’s caught there, because that’s what the camera lens does. Other times, you’ll

be watching something that has been made with such high ideals, and you’ll be,

like: “I can’t even keep my eyes open.”

RU: There is this kind of a superior attitude of people who are sort of into

underground sexuality…

DB: “More kinkier than thou.”

SB: Yeah, but you have the same kind of conversations in every part of the art

world — in music and painting and everything else. You have your little

factions. You have auteurs. You have people who put a signature on the work they

do and the moment you see it, you can tell it’s one of their films.

I’ll tell you an interesting story about this: one of the most important

pornographers in history died recently – Gary Graver. He worked on some of the

most influential films, including Bound. He inspired my choreography of the sex

scenes for Bound. And his obit was in the New York Times, Variety, and every

place else. But they didn’t mention that he was a pornographer! His porn name

was Robert McCallum. So they focused largely on the fact that he was Orson

Welles’ cameraman for thirty years. And he helped fund a lot of Orson’s projects

when Orson didn’t have a dime coming in. It was the porn that let him do that!

So I wrote a bunch of letters… “Why are you not saying… I mean, you talked about

all of his exploitation work, his horror flicks, his slasher films. None of

those are going to get any rave reviews.”

It’s laughable. He shot Steven Spielberg’s first movie — he worked with

everybody. His family certainly knows what he was doing. So why didn’t they

include that? And I got responses that showed the double standard that rules the

land. It was like, “Well, we wouldn’t do that. Why would we besmirch him?”

Besmirch? They’re the New York Times! If somebody murdered someone, but later

discovered the cure for cancer, they would still mention that they served time

for that murder. I mean, they dig up dirt! It’s not all: “He had a wonderful

life, and everything went swell!”

RU: Like Larry King interviewing Adolf Hilter… “You were a vegetarian, right?”

SB: Exactly! So why would they report on people’s immorality, gambling,

criminality, lawsuits — but they wouldn’t mention that Gary Gravers did some of

the most significant porn films of all time — films that are still for sale and

have sold in every format.

RU: Before we wrap up, has it been a good life, being a “sexpert” for thirty

years? Is it a big responsibility? Is it a lot of fun? Do you wish you were a

fucking fishermen — like John Lennon used to say about being in The Beatles?

SB: On a personal level, sometimes I wish to be unknown. Having some celebrity

around my sexuality can be weird. When it comes to sexual and personal

attention, you’re always afraid of people’s agendas. I locked myself in the

bathroom of the last sex party I went to, because somebody who I thought was

interested in me really wanted me to read their manuscript.

RU: Well, that’s scary for anybody — when somebody approaches you with a

manuscript!

SB: It’s like: “I don’t want to see a manuscript, I want to fuck!” But in terms

of having social influence — and I bet John Lennon would have said the same

thing — you never get sick of influencing a conversation.

RU: Do you ever think it would’ve been cool to become famous as a writer about a

different topic, like television or quantum physics or something like that?

SB: I do write about all kinds of subjects. And I have a few readers who know

that part of me. I wrote for political publications for many years before my

writing about sex started becoming commercially successful.

RU: Do you go off on many topics on your audio show?

SB: I certainly do. In fact…

RU: …You get complaints? People like their narrowcasting!

SB: Sometimes I get complaints. I’ve got this one Republican listener. He writes

me over and over again. He wants to discuss his marital situation at length. I

keep quoting my favorite dominatrix to him: “We’re not spanking Republicans any

more. We’re not servicing you with sex tips until you realize that this stuff

that you’re doing in bed, and your voting/political behavior are at odds. You’re

hurting people.” Ow!

RU: We can’t spank Ann Coulter?

SB: God, no! I wouldn’t touch her with a 10-foot pole!

RU: Michelle Malkin? I do have my fantasies.