No wonder Ronald Reagan's mantra "Get the government off people's back" became such a big hit with certain criminally inclined characters.

Of course, this type could not function if government supervision analyzed and scrutinized what they were up to.

Paul Kane and Ben Pershing's Washington Post story that appeared in the Seattle Time June 13 contained the following:

HOUSE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE EX-TREASURER OF EMBEZZLEMENT

With Barack Obama as an African American who has secured the Democratic Party presidential nomination, much has been written lately about the Bradley Effect as it applied to the 1982 California governor's race.

The element that has surprised me thus far is that, as someone who was born, grew up and voted in Southern California for years, I have seen that the Bradley Effect has not been discussed any time that I saw it written about or alluded to as it developed in full measure.

The late Tom Bradley was a popular African American politician who rose through the ranks of a track scholarship and resulting degree from UCLA, where Jackie Robinson was a classmate, to a lieutenant's position in the Los Angeles Police Department and, after attending law school at night, a degree from Southwestern University.

Bradley lived his entire life in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, which was predominantly white for years and ultimately became primarily African American in population.  

Shortly prior to Australia's last election this column provided a warm endorsement for Kevin Rudd and stated the hope that Australia would look to its future and separate itself from its past and Bush stalwart John Howard.

It will be recalled that Howard stirred up the international political scene when he attacked Barack Obama for daring to attack the Iraq War policies of his stalwart ally George W. Bush.

Howard soon learned that he had problem enough in attempting to win a new term as prime minister in the face of Kevin Rudd's Labor Party.  Howard did not help his cause by gratuitously entering the U.S. presidential sweepstakes through attacking Obama and pressing the case for George Bush's unpopular Iraq War policies.

Australians had strongly indicated sending any troops to Iraq and supporting a cause they felt was unjust and contravened international law.  Many of us recall the day that the protest was so strong that Howard used the rear door of his residence to avoid encountering a large contingent of protesters.

One of America's toughest prosecutors, Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson and his equally vigilant killer band and wrote up his experiences in the bestseller "Helter Skelter" has trained his savvy prosecutorial eyes on none other than George W. Bush.

The result of that effort is Bugliosi's current book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder."

Bugliosi uses the same approach with Bush that he did when he was a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney who prosecuted the Manson Gang along with other murder defendants.

His result is to sharply indict and convict Bush for starting a war in Iraq and causing the deaths of what respected international sources now say numbers over 1.2 million people, in addition to which there have been more than 7.5 million Iraqis compelled to flee their homes.

An editorial June 9 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wisely warned of the White House's intentionally distorting information to justify war.

Malcolm D. McPhee of Sequim, Washington in his Letter to the Editors wrote:

"This is not a minor indiscretion on the part of the president.  It is an international war crime to fabricate intelligence to start a war not otherwise justifiable in international law.  We have seen the continuing and unnecessary sacrifices of our military in Iraq.  What this president has done will have long-term adverse effects on generations of Americans to come."

Future generations have been saddled with a staggering debt of almost $10 trillion to pay off.

On the evening of June 9, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush.  

These articles introduced in the House of Representatives include lies concerning the claimed existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the deliberate use of those untruths to launch a war against Iraq in contravention of the U.S. Constitution and international law.

Kucinich's effort also included the approval of illegal unapproved wiretapping against U.S. citizens.

Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida was one of the co-sponsors of Kucinich's effort.

At a TV press conference on who he plans to appeal to for votes in his presidential campaign, John McCain beamed a big smile.

McCain exclaimed that Reagan voters could support him, inferring that he would follow Reagan's policies, no doubt lock step in the tradition of the Reagan Republican mantra, "Get the government off people's backs!"

He studiously avoided any mention of George W. Bush, whose latest NBC Poll approval rating stands at 25 percent.

Bush followed the Reagan policy of "getting the government off people's backs" to the letter when it came to beef inspection.  Less than 1 percent of U.S. cows are currently inspected.  

Friday, June 5 the Seattle Times reported this headline:

BUSH FAULTED ON CASE FOR IRAQ WAR

Mark Marzetti and Scott Shane wrote:

"A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq's weapons programs and Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaida."

Sometimes an event appears that one crystallizes as totally correct, a justifiable result based on correct application of the facts.

Such a result occurred with the announcement this week that George Bush's support figure has plummeted to yet another calamitous low.  Bush's rating stands at 25 percent according to the current NBC Poll.

When Dan Abrams, an NBC commentator, spoke about this development on his Friday, June 6 edition on MSNBC, he spoke with justifiable surprise.  As Abrams indicated, generally, even with a record the vast majority of Americans rate as thoroughly abysmal, as has been the case with Bush for some time now, such unfortunate chief executives can at least squeak out a 30 to 35 percent figure.

Richard Nixon represents such an example.  Even in the doldrums of his drowning presidency, when Barry Goldwater, on behalf of a Republican Party frightened that it faced potential extinction, Nixon never plummeted below 30 percent.

Was George Bush's Iraq War more devastating than China's 7.0 earthquake with 87,000 killed or injured?

Was George Bush's Iraq War more devastating than Myanmar's (Burma's) cyclone that killed 140,000?  

It has been estimated that some 250,000 people have been dislocated in China.   The number of displaced persons in Myanmar is unknown.

The Iraq War Iraqi death estimates range between 600,000 to over 1.2 million lives lost.

The pictures on international television have been tragic, illustrating gross injustice and a dictatorial mentality to thwart democracy.

Those pictures have been indelibly frozen into the minds and hearts of anyone who saw them and cares about justice.  

In an effort to squelch democratic efforts to challenge the harsh authoritarian rule of Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, his hired thugs have captured elements known to be opposed to his rule and cut off their legs.  

Thank goodness the international media made certain that filmed footage of the punished souls who sought to fight for democracy were shown for proponents of democracy to see.

It is not as mysterious as one may think.  Historian Arnold Toynbee explained that societies obsessed with their sex organs are collapsing.

And the other collapsing signal is when a society shows no respect for the dead.

Every day, there are a series of endless commercials on TV peddling sex drugs.  When the heart doesn't pump sufficient blood for an erection there are multiple drugs that are designed to do the trick.  They always include the usual warning.

A verbal warning is provided that if the erection lasts more than 4 hours, call a doctor.

While the world's rich get richer, the world's poor starve to death.

David C. Duncombe of Salmon, Washington in a Letter to the Editors of the Seattle Post Intelligencer on June 2 wrote the following:

"Control of the world's affairs is quietly slipping into the hands of international financial institutions.  It's called globalization.  Today there are 10 million millionaires worldwide, 1,100 of whom are billionaires, some earning in 10 minutes what their workers earn in a year.  This growing disparity between the rich and poor is morally obscene.  Food ... in the Third World has jumped 60 percent in the past year."

No wonder the horrifying greed of the few has triggered this 50,000 of the world's poor who are dying of starvation every day.

Rupert Murdoch earned tremendous credit for reaching the crescendo of unintended humor with his statement that Fox News is fighting for its "Credibility"!

To even use a term such as credibility in connection with the Bush Criminal Enterprise's propaganda tool that helped steal the 2000 presidential election by using Bush's cousin John Ellis to make the first call for that same cousin at Fox takes colossal nerve and Murdoch has that in spades.

This is also the same network that later helped launch the Iraq War by presenting every Bush and Dick Cheney distortion as gospel truth, playing on fear as it controlled its faithful Fox Zombie audience.  

The Fox story reads like a horror film written by George Orwell.

The information continues to abound that the McCain campaign represents a lobbyist bazaar in the worst tradition of corporate greed at the expense of gouging regular taxpayers.

Charlie Black, one of the pre-eminent figures of the presidential campaigns of George Bush the Elder, was reported as touching base with his lobbying interests while aboard the McCain campaign bus, which is ironically called "The Straight Talk Express."

In addition to working with a laundry list of major corporate forces, Black's efforts were also linked to the late Ferdinand Marcos, repressive dictator of the Philippines who was overthrown through mass demonstrations after trying to steal an election Republican style when international observers calculated he lost to Corazon Aquino, who rightfully succeeded to the office she won at the polls, by a 65 to 35 percent margin.

Lately, though, the major focus has been on McCain's leading economic adviser, Phil Gramm, as it should be considering the red flags that the former U.S. Senator from Texas has set off in the past while continuing to do so in the present.