8:30 pm CST
A Reader Writes: I love your website and I anxiously access it every day. I especially liked Operation Northwoods.  About the S factor ;I couldn't agree more.  I love it when these neo-conned fools squawk about entertainers such as Willie Nelson or Sean Penn who exercise their God-given 1st Amendment right to freedom of expression, stating that they abuse their celebrity status to unduly influence the public, and that they, after all, are only highly paid entertainers whose opinions are no more valid than the next guy's. These folk are willfully ignorant of the fact that their great icons, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity et al. are no less highly paid ENTERTAINERS as well, whose only job is to keep the public agitated over the false left / right paradigm.  I noticed how one of the opinion writers spoke of the great hypocrisy of Willy Nelson, citing his past income tax issues.  I wonder if this person recalls hearing Limbaugh in past days crying out for mandatory prison for drug addicts? And as for Willie's tax issue...obviously that opinion writer has no concept of the relationship between the IRS and the Federal Reserve. Create phantom money out of nothing through the concept of fractional reserve banking; lend the US government (at interest) money that doesn't really exist, running the national debt beyond belief, then extort direct income taxes from the people to pay for that same interest debt which only exists in the books of the Federal Reserve. What a concept!  Being kept ignorant of this and other nefarious government schemes is just what the neo-cons want. Remember, you're a kook if you believe in any so-called New World Order. Maybe the "S" factor could also be described as the "M" factor, for "mushroom" people. They prefer to be kept in the dark and fed BS. Anyway, keep the good stuff coming!!

Excellent points, particularly as regards the Federal Reserve. Readers desiring information about the Federal Reserve scam should read G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature from Jekyll Island. Google the title and you'll find excerpts, as well as places where you can order the book.

8:10 pm CST
On Thursday, January 15, Austin's KOOP Radio 91.7 FM will broadcast Angela Keaton's interview with me on her Liberated Space program. The interview was taped last Monday; in half an hour we managed to cover a lot of ground, from underground comics to the New World Order. The interview will also be carried by webcast on KOOP's site. I will post more about the show as we approach the broadcast date.

8:13 pm CST
My friend and fellow conspirator SMiles Lewis, proprietor of the Elfis Network, has begun a personal blog at Elfis.Net. In this entry he introduces himself and discusses his experiences in Dreamtime.

8:06 pm CST
Valis, the proprietor of LibertyThink, has just launched a new site: Awoken. Check it out.

8:05 pm CST

The letters section in this morning's edition of the Austin American-Statesman contained several letters reacting to Willie Nelson's new anti-war song. All but one were negative. If this ratio is representative of the general population's intelligence, then the S Factor ("S" for Stupid) is alarmingly high in this country.

Here is a specimen letter:

I find it amazing that Willie Nelson wrote a protest song after he tried to keep from our government millions of dollars. I guess there is no limit to the amount of hypocrisy that entertainers have. They sure love their freedom, but they aren't willing to pay a dime for it.

Here's another one:

If Willie Nelson is tired of hearing nothing but negative news, he should avoid CBS, NBC and CNN. He should try Fox News. And he should sing his protest songs to the terrorists.

If you are so inclined, you can read the other letters here.

As ignorant as they are, these letters are at least literate. Imagine the ones that did not get printed:

Willy Nelson has shoed his true colors and them colors is RED and I doent mean that Long RED HAIR a his. WHY he must bee sum kine a Comiminust are somthing rihgting a song like that. Don't he no nuthing? Thars tearorrists everwear and they want to KILL hour way of life and us to!!!!! Wear has Wily ben? May be he ben smoaking two much Pamanana RED?!?!?!  Andnother thang he doant' pay his income taxes niether. I ask you; DOES THIS SOUND LIKE MAN THAT LOVES HIS CUNTRY? may bee he bedder go sumwear wear paople doan't have the RIHGT to PAY INCOME TEXAS! How dose he exspect us to aford this WAR IF WE DONA'T PAY HOUR TAXES?!?! (A War whitch he doant' even thank we shuold be fighting! May be he wood not be such a MORAN if he wood watch Fox News? no he wood probly be to STONED to unerstand it! Willy Nelson is a disgraice, a disgraice, to this cuntrey and a disgraice to Cuntrye Western Music righting a song like that. Whut are hour soljiers going to thank win THEY hear it? LIVES WILL BE LOST bcause a whut he done whitch is why I thank he shuold be HUNG be cause last time I check the Freedom of Speach doant' applie to MURDERS or MORANS niether!!!!!

Sinseriously,
B. M. Peterson
Hog Waller, Texas

Earlier I mentioned the S Factor. I encountered this term in an opinion piece published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "The S (Stupid) factor explains Bush's popularity". An excerpt:

It's well past time that people confront this issue, no matter who's offended. We are on the way to becoming a nation of imbeciles. I'm certain that a plethora of "George W. Bush" jokes is already being circulated in every capital of the world. We can stop this sapping of our national integrity but we must do it soon, lest the morons become the norm and those of us who use our brains for more than memorizing advertising jingles are ourselves ostracized from society.

10:00 pm CST
We were sitting last night in the waiting room of the Birthing Center. Earlier we had been talking and laughing. But now, as midnight approached, we grew silent and began to yawn. Would the baby never be born?

Then, at 12:20 from the birthing room came a baby's cry. Everyone sat up, suddenly alert.

A few minutes later the midwife walked in and announced the successful birth of a girl. Seven pounds fifteen ounces.

Later, we all stood in the hallway waiting to go in and see the mother and baby. The father opened the door. "Two at a time," he said. "Grandfathers first."

The two grandfathers walked into the room. One of them was me.

In the bed my daughter held her daughter.

Afterwards, the other grandfather and I shook hands and congratulated each other.

He said, "I don't feel older."

I said, "Neither do I, but I definitely feel different."

12:21 pm CST
Another attack on the Bush-Nazi ads, this time from Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress: "Comparing the commander in chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. Comparing an American president, any American president, to Hitler is an outrage. The MoveOn.org ad was inexcusable. Political figures such as Al Gore, who have associated themselves with Moveon.org, have a special responsibility to condemn these ads; donors to the group such as George Soros have the same responsibility. They owe it not just to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. They owe it also as a simple matter of decency."

So now we're insulting the memory of those who died in the Holocaust if we compare Bush and Hitler and take note of the Bush family's connection to Hitler.

Who's really insulting the memory of those who died in the Holocaust?

For years, the Official Guardians of the Memory of the Holocaust--the Jewish American Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Anti-Defamation League--have urged us to "never forget" what happened in Nazi Germany and to never allow it to happen again.

And now, with the Bush administration, in true Hitlerian style, staging terror attacks, destroying freedom at home, and attacking other nations for no good reason, these same organizations, instead of leading the charge against the Fourth Reich, are among its loudest, most strident apologists.

For a number of informative links on the Bush-Hitler Nexus, visit this special section at Parapolitics.info.

To see one of the ads which caused this controversy, CLICK HERE.

2:19 pm CST
The Simon Wiesenthal Center Has Spoken.

In a press release issued today, the Wiesenthal Center condemned comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler which were made in two ads posted at MoveOn.org.

How grateful I am that the Wiesenthal Center has shown me the Way. How foolish I was to think that, simply because the Bush administration orchestrated the September 11 attacks to justify world conquest and destroy our civil liberties, that this was in any way similar to the tactics of the Third Reich. And how deeply, deeply foolish it was for me to see any significance at all in the financing of Hitler in the 1930s by Bush's grandfather Prescott, or in the many decades of Bush family involvement in criminal, treasonous enterprises.

That I was wrong, wrong, wrong is proven by the words of the Wiesenthal Center's spokesman Rabbi Marvin Hier who says that drawing parallels between Bush and Hitler is "shameful and beyond the pale and has no place in the legitimate discourse of American politics."

Well, that settles the matter for me.  Who could possibly disagree with rhetoric so powerful as Rabbi Hier's? Against that mighty wind of words, nothing so small, so insignificant, as a well-documented argument can possibly stand. Read articles such as "The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus" if you must; as for me, I find it more profitable to spend my time admiring the words of Rabbi Hier, repeating them over and over in my mind, saying them aloud, memorizing them: "shameful and beyond the pale," "shameful and beyond the pale." Yes sir, that really put me in my place. Woke me up too. I once was blind, but now I see.

And no sooner had the Wiesenthal Center issued its press release than the Anti-Defamation League, not to be out-done, issued its own press release, in which ADL Director Abraham Foxman stated it was "vile and outrageous" of anyone to suggest similarities between Bush and Hitler. Oh, thank you, Mr. Foxman. You have given us another powerful, convincing set of words: "vile and outrageous."

Oh, those are fine words, superior words—noble words. Let's put them together with the Rabbi's: "shameful, beyond the pale, vile, and outrageous." Wow. It sends shivers down my spine.

These words, coming from such great authorities on all things Nazi and anti-Semitic, are enough to convince me. They are now branded on my brain and will forever deter me from drawing one more comparison between Bush and Hitler, or from suggesting, for a moment, that Arnold Schwarzenegger's large donation to the Wiesenthal Center could possibly have had anything to do with the Center taking the position that his deep Nazi connections (his Gestapo father, his ongoing friendship with Kurt Waldheim, his public admiration of Hitler) is a trivial matter, unworthy of the least notice. Why, I would not even think such a "shameful, beyond the pale, vile, outrageous" thing. Nor would it ever occur to me, in a million years, to compare the Israeli government's murder of Palestinians to the Nazis' mass execution of Jews in World War II. I would have to be out of my mind to allow the very possibility to intrude upon the fringes of my consciousness.

2:11 pm CST
TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Flight Groundings Lead Allies to Query Washington

College student files federal lawsuit over "no-fly" list

France seeks inquiry into plane crash

Case for War Confected, Top U.S. Officials Say

Hawks demand an end to all evil, and maybe France, too

New evidence of FBI cover-up in OKBOMB

Dead Democrats: Wellstone, Carnahan, JFK Jr., Etc.