Oh, we thought of using the sum to reduce the budget deficit; fund the hydrogen car; retool U.S. manufacturing; rebuild aging bridges and roads; or reinvent American elementary, secondary and higher education. We’re supposed to have faith that the do-ray-me, used wisely, will make a difference. So we opted for the one choice that will do it.

We sent the dough to Barrack Obama—in time to help him beat John McSame in this month’s fundraising duel (deadline, midnight tonight).

Goodnight, John. G’night George.

Not since JFK, LBJ and RFK has a presidential figure talked to us in such honest, edifying and ultimately uplifting words about race, America’s most open sore. And, since Lincoln, nobody has done it better.

There were no soaring rhetorical flourishes here, no focus-grouped talking points, no succumbing to the pinched vision of the pygmy class of political handlers. Instead we were given the ultimate gift a candidate can grant us—an intelligent, highly nuanced address on an issue lesser leaders avoid except, all too often, to exploit for narrow, manipulative ends. And Obama offered it with the faith that we are adult enough to handle it.

It reminded me of the day in September, 1962, when I was a young Army private in the Jim Crow South, and Jack Kennedy stirred me to the marrow of my bones by going on national TV and radio to explain why he—we—had a moral obligation to desegregate George Wallace’s schools and why he had federalized the Alabama National Guard to do it.

Seizing his own “teachable moment,” Obama set the diversionary controversy over his former pastor in the broader context of what Americans of all hues and ethnic and religious backgrounds must do to redeem the stake we have in each other and create that “more perfect union.” (Contrast this, please, with John McCain’s tolerance of televangelist Rod Parsley—his “spiritual adviser”—a man who believes Islam must be destroyed by Christian warriors and called Catholicism a “great whore” and “false cult system.”)

Lest anyone think it is reflexive for me to eschew the Clinton campaign, Bill Clinton generously returned to Oregon in 1992, long after he had sewed up the state’s electoral votes, expressly to help me in my Senate race against Bob Packwood. I’ve always remembered his generosity with gratitude. Although I have never met Hillary, I’ve been loyal to her as Hillary haters tried to destroy her.

But as my old colleague, Bill Richardson, said today as he campaigned for Barack in Oregon, Obama is a “once in a lifetime candidate.”

The nation’s only Latino governor may have had in mind what Jon Robin Baitz described in the Huffington Post about the Obama revealed by this speech. “This, then,” Baitz wrote, “is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of “what is is”), those doubts were laid to rest by [Obama’s] magisterial speech—a speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor.”

Just so. It’s Obama for me.

My Slideshow 1/10/08

U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson

At the Khyber Pass with the ResistanceBut the truth is far more extraordinary—and the upshot in Afghanistan far less successful—than the 97-minute confection created by Director Mike Nichols, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and their heavyweight cast: Hanks (who plays Wilson), Julia Roberts (a Houston socialite/Soviet hater), and Philip Seymour Hoffman (a rogue CIA field man and Wilson co-conspirator who said what brought them together was “chasing pussy and killing Communists”).

The movie’s omissions turn it into a romantic adventure sprinkled with comedy, combat, and just enough fact to be believable. But it’s worth a ticket if only to see Hoffman, who deserves his second Oscar in as many years for his portrayal of Gust Avrakotos, the CIA agent—a performance that makes Hanks scramble to remain the biggest man on the screen.

The Movie’s Missed Opportunity

My problem, and I expected it, is that, working with a compelling true story, the movie blew an opportunity to delve into the yin and yang of good and evil inherent in both realpolitik and the mortals who inhabit it, let alone explore the tendency for seeds of failure to exist in “victory.” (After our Mujahdeen “friends” defeated the Soviet Army, many of them gave our arms to or became Osama bin Laden’s ally and protector, the Taliban, with which the U.S. would be at war in 12 years.) Alas, paradox has never been a strong aspect of the Western mind, let alone the American mind. And Hollywood’s mind? Don’t get me started.

The real “Good Time Charlie” Wilson sat two chairs up from me on the House Defense Appropriations Committee for more than a decade. From that perch, I saw and (to an extent) helped him engineer what became the largest covert program in U.S. history—$1 billion—despite the initial timidity of the CIA and odd diffidence of the Reagan White House. And it was done entirely within the clandestine budget, with no publicly recorded vote ever taken.

I came to know and like the complex public and private Charlie Wilson, a man who was at once more disturbing and charming than either his movie incarnation or the figure described in the book that inspired the film (George Crile, Grove Press, 2003, ISBN 0802141242, 560 pp).

A long-legged, ramrod-straight Naval Academy graduate with a square jaw, wicked wit and booming basso profondo laugh, Charlie entertained elegantly in his Arlington, Virginia, condo overlooking the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Potomac River and the Capitol Mall beyond—affairs that I suspected but couldn’t prove were funded by his friends in the defense lobby.

That he had so many such friends, and carried their mail so brazenly, was one of Charlie’s many deep flaws. I recall him in committee, losing a debate on a dubious weapons system that even Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger didn’t want (and that’s saying something). Wilson held up the vote long enough to duck into the telephone booth and emerge with fresh talking points from the arms maker. I don’t remember if he won or lost; the point is that Wilson was butt-naked complicit with the defense lobby and didn’t give a damn.

The Better Angel of His Nature

Yet Charlie was a social and economic liberal who defied his Bible-thumping conservative district and its history of racial bigotry. He was a strong supporter of civil rights, minimum wage increases, Medicaid, and anti-poverty programs.

On women’s issues, Charlie was a dependable “yes” vote. He supported abortion rights, parental leave and the Equal Rights Amendment. Yet the hedonist in him collected women like a boy might collect marbles. His office staff was exclusively female, drop-dead beautiful and full bosomed. Everybody called them “Charlie’s Angels.”

In the movie, a visiting constituent glances at those aides and asks Hanks (Wilson) why he hired gorgeous women. Hanks’ reply is one I heard Charlie use in real life more than once: “You can always teach ‘em to type, but you can’t teach ‘em to grow tits.”

Aside from constituent service, stellar votes on social and economic issues, Charlie’s individual legislative efforts were unremarkable for many years. However, in the late 1970s he engaged in an act of foreign policy hubris that, seen now, foretold his Afghanistan adventure.

With Somoza Until the Dictator Made a Bad Move

Ever the Annapolis man, Charlie admired the Central American dictator, Anastasio Somoza, a West Point graduate, and threatened to wreak the Carter Administration’s Panama Canal treaty if Carter didn’t resume support for Somoza. Wilson’s ardor was unaffected by the Nicaraguan leader’s unsuccessful offer of a large cash bribe at their first meeting. Later Charlie arranged a meeting between Somoza and a high-ranking CIA official in a bid to save the dictator. But when Somoza fondled Tina Simons, Wilson’s girlfriend at the time, Charlie dropped him like a dead armadillo. (Fascism was one thing; a man’s woman was another!)

I’ve always believed that Charlie’s single-minded support for the subjugated Afghans came in equal measure from a zest for danger, revulsion at Communism and empathy for a people who told him of daughters raped, children mutilated, sons and fathers decapitated, and pregnant women bayoneted in the stomach. Yet he always said they would fight the Russians with stones if necessary.

Wilson traveled frequently to the region as modern arms began to arrive and Afghans brought down Soviet helicopter warships and fixed wing aircraft with increasing skill. Inevitably, he would bring along a personal cache of booze and a beautiful woman on his arm. Sex, war, and alcohol were the trifecta in the hierarchy of Wilson’s tastes.

Wilson’s Outlandish Revenge

Charlie stormed home from one such trip with blood in his eye. A U.S. Air Force colonel had banned his female companion from flying out of Pakistan with him on a government plane. Wilson and the officer almost came to blows before Charlie placed one call to the presidential palace in Islamabad. Soon General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq’s personal jet arrived, picked up Wilson and his date and roared off, leaving the American colonel slack-jawed on the tarmac.

Charlie would get his revenge in the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He passed an amendment (over my objection) to remove the officer’s plane. And just to make sure the colonel and his superiors got the message, Wilson’s measure reassigned the jet to the Texas Air National Guard.

In the larger sense, though, the Afghan issue brought out brilliant legislative skills few knew Charlie possessed. There’s a scene in the movie—true to fact—in which he promises Midwest congressmen, in return for their support, to deliver the Black Caucus votes for the Farm Bill, a political act as unnatural as the physical act Charlie told the Air Force colonel to perform on himself.

Wilson, 74, has moved back to Lufkin, Texas, his boyhood home, and finally married. Last fall he had a heart transplant when a congenital disease that had haunted him throughout his coke consumption, carousing and contretemps left him on death’s doorstep.

It’s seventy two years later, and it’s happening. Has been, for several years. The latest move by our neo-con masters is to starve us of information we need to remain citizens, the better to make us serfs.

On December 18, the FCC relaxed the rules on media ownership, making it easier for conglomerates to buy up news outlets. It was another turn of the vise on the free flow of information.

Fascism is just another word for corporatism.

Keep that in mind as you watch this disturbing video about the FCC outrage and what it means to each of us, courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal (PBS). The story shows that FCC Chair Kevin Martin, a neo-con Bush appointee, had made up his mind and created a 3-2 majority for the new media consolidation rule even before the sham public hearings had been concluded.

El Duce didn’t listen to public opinion either.

I’m supporting Steve Novick for the U.S. Senate and, after you’ve read this, I hope you will join me by making a financial contribution to him in any amount you can afford. Trust me when I say: Steve’s strengths are exactly what’s needed to defeat Gordon Smith next year.

Steve may be a dark horse—he may be up against a primary challenger favored by the chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (DSCC)—but he’s a fearless truth-teller who’s just as opposed to George Bush’s coup d’état in slow motion as he is the timidity of Senate Democrats who are rolling over for the Buckaroo-in-Chief.

Those Democrats include that same chairman of the DSCC who helped give Bush enough votes to confirm a new attorney general who refuses to say water boarding is torture.

Steve Novick is as mentally tough and quick-witted as he is bright—a debater who’ll strip Smith of the patina of political moderation so painstakingly prepared over the years. A University of Oregon graduate at the age of 18, a Harvard-educated U.S. Justice Department lawyer who made his name suing polluters—nailing corporations who poisoned Love Canal—Steve has a razor-sharp mind and is faster on his feet that any candidate I’ve seen in years.

Your contribution—today—of $35, $50, $100 or whatever you can afford—will be a direct blow to the Republican Party and its man in the White House who, sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, treats the law as a set of suggestions for his consideration.

Read the words of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former U.S. Attorney: In his assertion of power, Bush is essentially saying: “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

Senator Whitehouse is describing despotism! Our country is literally being hijacked by a Republican Party that would destroy our freedoms to “save” them.

In the fight against this galloping psychosis, I believe Steve Novick to be the shrewder, tougher, better fighter of the two Democrats running for the Senate.

(This is no attack on Jeff Merkley, whom I could support at another time, in a normal era.)

But now is the time to put a tiger in the Senate. We had one once. Wayne Morse risked scorn, and probably sacrificed his seat, to defend the Constitution he loved and oppose the war he hated. We had another in Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who braved ridicule for the same beliefs.

Steve Novick will be that kind of Senator.

Steve condemns the cynical Republican resolution in the 2003 session of the Oregon Legislature that simultaneously praised “President George Bush’s courage” in launching a first strike war against Iraq and supported “our troops.” It’s the kind of tactic the neo-conservative revolution has depended on—snookering enough Democratic support to inoculate Bush and his allies from effective political criticism. Steve Novick would have opposed that resolution; Jeff Merkley voted for it.

Jeff is a good man and does not support Bush or the war any more than Steve does. But Jeff took the GOP’s bait when he could have voted “No.”

Or, better, as House Minority Leader, Jeff could have out-maneuvered Republicans by engineering a Democratic Minority Report supporting the troops without glorifying Bush. Minority Reports are voted on before the bills to which they are attached; thus, it would have separated the issues, allowed Democrats to support the troops, and then oppose Bush on the war. It didn’t happen. This reveals a key difference between the Democratic candidates as we look for someone to effectively fight the neo-conservative putsch that threatens us.

Fortunately, Steve’s strengths are exactly what’s needed to defeat Gordon Smith, a very talented traditional politician.

In a debate between Steve Novick and Smith, Gordon won’t know what hit him.

Because the truth about Gordon Smith is this: despite a moderate vote here and there (which he often contradicts later), he is an enabler of the Republican hijacking of this country.

I’ve thought about this race for months. With alarm, I’ve watched the rising despotism of the Republicans for years. I truly believe we need Steve Novick in the Senate at this most dangerous of times. Please consider making a donation—today—by clicking on this link.

You’ll be glad you did.

It’s surprising that it took so long for Dick Cheney to be seen as the shadowy, macabre figure he has revealed himself to be—a tout of torture, a prophet of preemptive war, and a sorcerer of secrecy (not to mention a wholly self-owned branch of the U.S. government).

Before and after the 2000 election, when Cheney led the vice presidential search—and picked himself—the mainstream media equated his quiet manner and mellifluous voice with a moderate personal nature that happened to embrace orthodox conservatism. This proves they didn’t know dick about Cheney.
I did. Still do.

My epiphany occurred on a May morning in 1987, when Cheney and I found ourselves together in Red Square.

It was a heady era. We had accompanied then-House Speaker Jim Wright and other legislators to Moscow to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, the intriguing new Kremlin leader who offered hope for a thaw in, if not the end to, the Cold War. Even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the archconservative “Iron Lady,” had announced after meeting the charismatic Gorbachev, “We can do business together.”
On our second morning in Moscow, my friend, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), and I rose early to jog before the start of a long day of meetings. What could be more indicative of the new US-Soviet era than two U.S. congressmen trotting through Red Square, past Lenin’s Tomb and the Kremlin, without clearance from a party apparatchik?

As we circled in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral for our return, a spectral figure emerged in the distant mist. If someone had said the hunched man in the overcoat was Karla, the ethereal cold-blooded Soviet spymaster in John Le Carré’s novels, you wouldn’t have gotten an argument from me.
It turned out to be not Karla but Cheney, the second-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House, the senior Republican on the trip, George Bush Sr.’s soon-to-be secretary of defense—and, ultimately, the real-life American version of the funereal Karla.

Steam rising from our sweat suits, Dicks and I were anxious to share our exuberant moment with Cheney. “Imagine, Dick!” Norm exclaimed. “Here we are, standing in the middle of Red Square. What does it make you think?”

Cheney gave a thin smile and replied, “Just that I’m standing on Ground Zero.”
I knew Cheney for ten years as a fellow congressman and for four years when he was defense secretary and I, a member the House Defense Appropriations Committee.

When people ask me to describe Cheney, I say, “morbid.”

This is a man who believes in war (despite—perhaps because—he’s never been in one), feels no moral qualms about making the U.S. an attack-first nation, and subscribed to the nuclear doctrine perfected by Reagan’s defense secretary, Casper Weinberger: “1) to fight a protracted nuclear war; 2) to fight it on a global basis and, 3) to prevail” [emphases added].

Today the war believer—immersed in almost every Bush White House initiative, major and minor—is leading a highly veiled reorganization of U.S. military priorities, downgrading al Qaeda and upgrading nuclear-minded Iran.

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh reports that the policy “redirection” rests on the calculation that Iran is, or will become, the more potent enemy of the two. It is also based on the possibility that Tehran will fill the power vacuum created by the near total collapse of Iraqi society—and that Iraq’s predominate Shiite population will align itself with Tehran in building a de facto Greater Shiite Iran. (This is exactly the outcome of the US invasion that many independent analysts predicted, to Cheney’s scorn.)

Influenced by the vice president, Hersh reports, the Bush Administration has infiltrated U.S. Special Forces into Iran to gather intelligence on bombing targets for the four aircraft carrier strike groups poised in the Mediterranean Sea.

I don’t know if Cheney has stood in the Grand Bazaar in central Tehran.

But I know Dick, and I’m sure he has thought of his own name for it.

In the green room, my mind went back thirty years to a different basketball venue we shared—the U.S. House Members’ Gym—and pick-up games in which Gore was a deadeye from the outside.

His political touch was never as deft. His consultant-inspired sighs and patronizing name-dropping in the 2000 debates helped George Bush more than George Bush helped himself, an odd feat.

The man I met at the Rose Garden, however, has blown off consultants, taken precise aim at causes larger than himself and seems liberated because of it. When they write the history of climate change, Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth may prove as seminal as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to abolition.

Now comes The Assault On Reason, which warns against a threat not to the natural environment but to the American political environment and democracy itself. [FOR FULL ARTICLE, GO TO BOOK REVIEWS ON MAIN PAGE]

But we weren’t prepared for the frantic police activity in this community. Here are some actual entries in Bozeman Chronicle’s official police report:

Tuesday, June 5:

• A man was warned peeing on city hall.

• A man at a dowtown bar passed out, then defecated and urinated on himself. He was warned.

Friday, June 1:

• A person on South Third Avenue had a problem with skunks.

• A duck at the Bozeman pond had a fish hook stuck in its wing. An officer was unable to capture the duck.

Wednesday, May 30:

• A person on North Willson Avenue told police a woman was screaming. When police arrived, they learned that the screaming was coming from a horror movie.

• A woman on Olivine Street told police a burglar entered her home in the middle of the night and stole her son’s python snake.