Let's get right to the point here. What I'm atalking about here is the Minneopolis based Star Tribune, which on a regular basis puts out the Republican party line on health care, W's war mongering, and just about every other issue I've noticed in this GOP rag.

Just this last Friday's issue was trying to sell the Iraq War to folks here in Minnesota, where even based on the flawed official vote count, people voted for John Kerry, and that was definitely true in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul as well some of their suburbs. Also opposition to the war seems to be pretty strong here, as you might expect, given the fact that Paul Wellstone was a senator from for a good while and up until his death. People have to wonder why don't these "wonderful" elites at the Tribune ever get it. We don't want this damn war nor the jack asses in this administration who gave it to us. Actually we're haveing to pay for it, thus I shouldn't say they're giving us anything but a con job, which they're real good at at least trying to do. Fortunately, though, here it's meeting with less and less success, and that's actually pretty good news.

On the front page, though, the Tribune is trying to sell the Iraq War to us. Give this BS a rest! Think outside the GOP
loony right/far right box for a change. What's all this bull about the good side of this war. The "good side" of this war includes all the rape, torture, pillage, and kill that Attila the Hun would just love. I'd hate to have look at the bad side, if what we already know is the good side.

Then on health care, the Tribune is real good at putting out the party line, virtually genuflectiong before the health insurance companies telling us how they now are actually just hiking the prices because we consumers are causing it. That's a damn lie, and the damn Tribune knows it. Health care costs in this country are higher because we use the pure market/rip off/ con job heath insurance industry non plan made of all too many schemes for sucking the blood out of the consumer while lining the pockets of the rich white parasites running this industry.

Why can't the Tribune simply take a look at the objective information available to all which shows Canada provides absolutely top notch health care to all its people at a much lower price with a publicly funded system, and it is a system which provides health care in Canada, unlike the inferior Third World type care people get here in the USA, as I know first hand. The UN World Health Organization, which is about as independent and impartial source available, rates US health care as right there with the Third World, with Mexico giving us competition. What the hell is that? But yet these jack asses keep trying to sell people this absolute BS about how the market does health care better.
Hey, you at the Star Tribune, can you say I'm a lying whore for the health insurance industry and the whole neo con agenda? Oh, how dare I ask? You are, after all, the official GOP newspaper of the Twin Cities. Oh, the World Health Organization rankis Canada very high on health care. Lately they've been getting some waiting as to extent they've tried to bring the rip off/market/con job/raw deal which we use here in this country. But once Canada gets back to being Canada, folks up there will probably get things sorted out with much less reliance on the market and they'll go back to having even better health care.

It's also worth noting that at least one company has located in Canada rather than the USA, and health care is the reason as far is known. It would certainly make sense, as people Canada are healthier, and they're as well educated as the American labor force, if not more so.

It would be nice to get something other than the neo con line around here the way folks in Madison WI do with the Capital Times. But that newspaper actually looks for the facts instead just carrying water for the GOP and ther rest the neo cons. Maybe that's the reason people can get the truth there, but not here unless they ignore the Star Tribune and use the internet to get the Common Dreams web site which gets out at least quite a bit of the truth to the neo cons everlasting discomfort, and to Common Dreams' everlasting credit.

A case can be made for saying that Al Gore's running mate in 2000 kept Gore from getting to the White House, and someone has already done so, therefore I won't claim this is my original idea at all. But this individual basically said that Al Gore"s number two man got in the way of Gore making it to the White House by all too constantly contradicting Gore when he said anything that seemed even slightly liberal or progressive, even though have may been only symbolic language rather than any specific liberal or progressive stand. The phrase "I'm fighting for the people . . ." readily comes to mind. Just about as soon as Gore would get that out of his mouth, up would just his running made to say he couldn't agree, and tell everybody how he really was all for Wall Street not main street and that was that. If anyone doubts how that could have hurt the national ticket in that campaign, just consider how this looks to the liberal and progressive base of the party when Gore gets contradicted by his running mate constantly about these ever so slightly liberal to progressive remarks. After a while the base figures, "Where are the Democrats in this campaign"? "Is this just going to be about voting for the Republican of your choice"? "If so, just count me out!" Then this leads to a significant drop in Democratic voter turnout which always favors the GOP. Now is the picture beginning to become clear? Almost surely it is. Moreover, just think of the impact of this on what was a very cloose contest and which went right down to the wire in New Hampshire, which could have put Gore over the top in the electoral vote. Nevada also wasn't that strong for W, and a campaign there better targetted at the party's base might well have given that state's elelctoral votes to Gore. Of course, with just New Hampshire, Florida wouldn't have mattered anyway.

Throwing away the party's base can be absolutely politcally hazardous and often politically fatal!

For those who really would like to have avoided the current "wonderful" administration, all of the above isn't just academic, but instead is all too tragic!

Hilary Rodham Clinton's stand for the DSCC backing the senatorial candidate Connecticut Democrats choose in their primary isn't enough to really make up for the fact that she has way too inclined to give this obscenely right wing adminstration to much of a pass on issue after issue for many of liberals or progressives to get all that excited about this one thing, and actually in the primary she is backing Lieber "neo con" man, thus by sticking her nose into this primary to support a really lousy far right candidate, she probably shows her true colors. More importantly, like Jeff Cohen, a solid progressive who founded FAIR, a media watch dog group which monitors the US media for bias which surely has been right wing, who says he's had enough of all the Clintons, I have to say I agree wholeheartedly. All that triangulation simply amounted to going the way the wind of public opinion went or money went, and often it was which way the money from big time money contributors went. We've had way too much of that from the GOP, and we sure don't need it from the Democrats, and to their credit many Democrats, and more and more lately have begun to go against the way the money goes, though not so much against public opinion, especially on war mongering, but simply going along with the majority opinion position of the American people. Some Democrats have even had the guts to lead such as Russ Feingold, Edward Kennedy, and many of the black Democrats as well as a few other Democrats.

Now the most important thing, though, is that probably we need to take the Congress back from the GOP at the midterm election, and if that happens, move immediately when the next Congress opens for business with hearings going into all the dirty and outright criminal activities of this adminstration's top two gangsters-- the president and vice president. Once real investigations have taken place, we should have enough evidence to impeach and remove both these jack asses from office, and the Congress should see to it that that is done, with the House Speaker then right in line to move right into the White House. Can you say President Pelosi? I want to think we can if this gang in this administration is as dirty and criminal as they seem to be and would pull a coup at the drop of a hat if they even thought that the next presidential contest could lead to them being replaced by an administration they didn't like.

This gang in this administration have shown they're just about as low as any living thing can go, and I'm just not willing to take a chance that they wouldn't go for pulling off a coup if they see the probability that too much of their
criminal actions would finally be put under the sharp light of scrutiny which they deserve.

President Pelosi doesn't sound too bad once we think about it like that. She isn't my favorite, as my first preference would be Russ Feingold, but those of us who would prefer Feingold may have to hold that thought at least until we can make sure we preempt any potential right wing coup in this country.

Some may think I'm being too hard on this gang in this administration by saying that we might face a coup from this gang if they thought they might lose out, but that's just the way I see it after all this administration has done so far.
It would be great to be proved wrong on any prospective coups, but I'm not holding my breath.