Violence not only is threaded through America's school system, but tragically it has reached the point where even in the affluent San Diego suburb of La Jolla some residents say that local groups act more like street gangs than bona fide citizens.

In the May 12, 2008 New York Times article by Abby Aguirre, we read:

"But last spring, Mr. Kauanui was beaten to death, and five young men from La Jolla, all in their 20s, were charged in his murder.  In court last week, prosecutors said that because the men were members of the Bird Rock Bandits, they should be prosecuted under tough state laws that apply to street gangs."

Do street gangs flourish in glamorous beach town La Jolla, where homes sell for an average of $3.9 million?

A filmmaker Richard Kenvin, 47, commenting on the killing said, "They were gangsta chic."

Criminal conduct starts early in this Georgia third grade classroom.  

The Associated Press reported this startling expose incident of some 8 and 9 year olds who might have killed their teacher.

The teacher had scolded one of them for standing on a chair.  

The incident demonstrates parental lack of discipline.

Elizabeth Holtzman in a July 8 column appearing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer declared the following:

"According to a top aide, John McCain recently endorsed George W. Bush's right to wiretap U.S. citizens without court approval, despite the clear requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  It's clear that McCain has learned nothing from the past seven-plus years of Bush/Cheney assaults on the Constitution."

It is alarming that apparently Americans confused about a president's prerogatives, or the question must now be asked.  After 8 years of continuous constitutional abuses, are they so warped in their thinking that they imagine George Bush has the right to subvert the Constitution?

Holtzman cites imperative urgency, continuing:

It is no surprise that Phil Gramm is John McCain's leading financial adviser.  

When McCain decided to go after the 2008 Republican presidential nomination with gusto he realized that tactically the road to success lay in rolling over and becoming the reliant and supplicant puppy dog to Bush-Cheney and the neoconservative corporate bag men.

As such he could not have picked a better bag man than the former senator from Texas Gramm, who along with his wife created a king size loophole for Enron to be exempt from energy trading.  

Phil's senatorial largesse to Ken Lay's corrupt company, which then had a "full speed ahead" signal to rape California's power supply, came after his wife Wendy, as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, had earlier pushed through a rule excluding Enron's energy futures contracts from government oversight.

In a Seattle Times July 9 interview story by staff reporter Mark Rahner, Vincent Bugliosi, the lead prosecutor who put the Manson Family behind bars, tells about how, for the first time in his lengthy career as a bestselling author, he was compelled to visit New York City and labor diligently to find a publisher for his latest work on why George W. Bush should be prosecuted for murder for launching an illegal war in Iraq.

Bugliosi noted that the Seattle Times is the only major newspaper to provide him with an interview opportunity for a book that has now made the New York Times bestseller list.  He also mentioned how even liberal broadcast media sources will not interview him in connection with his well researched book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.  

The former prosecutor stated that while right wing broadcasting media sources do not fear the left, the same does not apply in reverse.  Bugliosi believes that the left broadcast media retains an abiding fear that the old McCarthy-Nixon retread of questioning patriotism and raising an accusation in the post-9/11 world of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" causes their sources to back off.

A Gallup Poll in 2005, which appeared in the January/February Atlantic Magazine revealed that the majority of Americans believe Bush "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction."

An ABC News/Washington Post survey in May 2006 found that 46% of the respondents said they believed the Bush administration had said "what it believed to be true" in making its case for the Iraq War.  But again, the majority 52% said that the Bush administration had, "intentionally misled the American public."

The way George Bush struts around before the TV news cameras, waving, smiling and nodding, one gets the distinct impression he appears oblivious to what the majority of Americans think about him.  

His popularity ratings descend to the lowest, sometimes only 27% approval of what he has done.  What is he up to as he whizzes around the world as if he is some revered statesmen?

(Part 1 of a 3-part series)

It has happened so often recently that the point needs to be addressed.

A few weeks ago I heard two well intentioned liberals on a television show hosted by one of them attempt to comprehend how George W. Bush had "won" the 2004 election despite a first term of failure and low polling figures from the public.

The show's host explained to his guest that the election was ultimately decided on "fear" and that the critical swing bloc that decided the election ultimately concluded that, despite any dislikes for Bush or misgivings about his record, that the Republicans were a safer bet during a period of potential peril than John Kerry and the Democrats.

Murray Friedman of New York City in his June 30 Letter to the Editors of the New York Times wrote:

"Anyone who has read Arthur Koestler's `Darkness at Noon' or Alexander Solzhenitsyn's `One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' will recognize the interrogation techniques described in the report on Chinese Communists and used by the United States authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"They were initiated and perfected by Stalin in the Soviet Union long before China adopted them, and the United States put them into practice.

"How shameful that our official security agencies adopted the same Stalinist tactics they decried so intensely during the Cold War."

The U.S. banks which operated with little or no close governmental supervision during the rein of the Bush Republican administration were making millions of risky loans to home buyers.

Eventually, these sub-standard loans to people with poor credit histories brought about two and a half million mortgage foreclosures.  Some big banks were bailed out with billions of U.S. dollars from the Federal Reserve.

Some banks officials are now under indictment for this fraud spectacle, but one big question remains.  

Who will bail out the world-wide banking institutions that were cleverly conned into buying these risk-laden loans?  

One of Dick Cheney's most preposterous comments amid a long political career of defying credibility and reality came before Donald Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" attacks were unleashed and American forces occupied Iraq.

"Our troops will be greeted as liberators!" Cheney confidently proclaimed.

Anyone with a reasonable knowledge of Arab history knows that its people do not want to be occupied by outside forces.  

This was what confronted Turkey's Ottoman Empire when stern Arab resistance during World War One prompted one of history's leading figures in understanding the Arab mind, T.E. Lawrence, known as "the crown prince of Arabia" to achieve unity among warring tribes for the objective of freeing the Arabs from outside influence.

U.S.A. drug addicts are consuming two-thirds of the world's illegal drugs, according to a recent CNN television report.

This stunning statistic has contributed mightily to the U.S.A. downward cycle.

Dangerous drug gangs are operating in most U.S. cities.  These murderous gangs go to war, fighting over their turf, where they clash continuously over drug selling territory.

To control this widespread, dangerous development in a united front against drug dealers is a formidable challenge.  The U.S.A., which now has a highly diversified population, must demand every segment of society unite to bring down widespread drug dealing and drug addiction.

The number one employer in Washington, D.C. is the prison system.  Guns have played a large role in making the Washington, D.C. prison system its number one employer.

In the June 30 Seattle Post-Intelligencer a Letter to the Editors addresses the recent decision by the Supreme Court which, through misinterpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, says that "militias" have the right to keep and bear arms.  This passage was misconstrued to mean that everybody has the right to a gun.

Lawrence Jacobson of Mercer Island, Washington wrote the following:

"What will be the likely outcome when our government urges every citizen to carry a loaded gun?  Do law enforcement officials think our streets will be safer with more guns in the hands of everyday citizens, including the angry or mentally imbalanced?  Do you trust Antonin Scalia to decide your children's safety when they go to school?"

Action needs to be taken in the continuing ruthless pursuit of power by Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe.  After the counting was finished the inevitable result of a Mugabe "victory" in the presidential election was confirmed Sunday, June 29.

Mugabe's paper triumph was tainted by two elements that would not and should not go away.  

His principal rival, fearing death following an attack by Mugabe's police thugs on the rival party's headquarters, sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy in Zimbabwe's capital city of Harare.

The other element was that, unlike the first round of voting, in which the incumbent Mugabe finished second, the lines that formed at polling stations amid excitement were replaced by empty streets.

B.B. before Bush and A.B. after Bush.

This represents what the U.S.A. was like before its economic free fall, and after the nation declined economically.

History will never forget Nero fiddling while Rome burned.  History will never forget Bush and his silly sword dance before the Saudis while the U.S.A. burned with rage as crude oil prices soared to approximately $140 a barrel.

When George Bush took up residence in the White House January 20, 2001, crude oil was $28.66 a barrel.  Before Bush (B.B.) U.S. citizens could use their cars to go to work as well as for pleasure trips.

Is George Bush so far removed from reality that he fails to see how vulnerable he is when he calls the ruthless and undemocratic government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe "illegitimate"?

Mugabe has something in common with George Bush in that he has legitimacy problems on his own behalf and achieved "victories" in 2000 and 2004 amid ruthless and undemocratic practices that were aimed at African Americans.

Bush's own brother Jeb, as governor of Florida, teamed up with then Secretary of State Katherine Harris to create a successful scheme to disenfranchise thousands of African American voters in the Sunshine State.  

As a result the vote was close enough to allow the Federalist Society to prevail with a U.S. Supreme Court majority of one to shut down a democratic recount in that crucial and deciding state and throw the election to Bush.