[Vision2020] I'm baaack . . . with a present for Pat Kraut

[Joan Opyr]

Hello Visionaries:

I'm back from North Carolina, thank heavens.  After a week spent moving 
my 84-year old grandmother out of her home of 54 years and into a nice, 
safe, clean apartment, Idaho has never looked so lovely.  What, you may 
wonder, does 54 years' worth of accumulated detritus look like?  It 
looks like 4,000 issues of Life Magazine, Reader's Digest, old pay 
stubs, many, many, many cobwebs and spiders, and the receipt for my 
mother's birth: way back in 1942, it cost $36.50 to have a baby in 
Raleigh's Rex Hospital.  I asked my grandmother why she'd saved the 
receipt -- was she planning to return my mother at some point?  If so, 
she should have given birth at Nordstrom.  They'll take anything back 
without a receipt.

I am, of course, enjoying the news streaming out of Texas.  Hunting 
without a license?  Hunting from a truck?  Shooting a member of one's 
hunting party?  My, my.  I see now that we should be grateful that Dick 
Cheney had "other priorities" during Vietnam.  But, lest we lose sight 
of other important events in the news, I am (without permission) 
reposting the following from Salon.com.  Here you go, Pat -- have at 
it!

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.newwest.net
www.joanopyr.com

 From Salon.com, February 13, 2006:

Cheney shoots, but there's other news to blow away

Here's the odd thing about the White House decision not to go public 
with news that Dick Cheney had shot a man: All things considered, it's 
a better story for the White House than some of the others that might 
be getting attention today:

Hurricane Katrina: As the New York Times is reporting, Republicans in 
the House of Representatives are about to release a "blistering" report 
on the Bush administration's response to Katrina. In the report, 11 
Republicans say that the administration slowed the evacuation of New 
Orleans by ignoring an early report of a levee break -- a report the 
White House initially claimed not to have had. "If this is what happens 
when we have advance warning, we shudder to imagine the consequences 
when we do not," says a draft of the report. "Four and a half years 
after 9/11, America is still not ready for prime time."

Iraq: In what's being described as a victory for Muqtada al-Sadr and a 
setback for the Bush administration, Shiites selected Ibrahim Jafari as 
their nominee to become Iraq's prime minister. Even before the vote, 
Nebaska Sen. Chuck Hagel -- a Republican -- was raining on the Bush 
administration's parade of progress. Three years into the war, Hagel 
said, "things haven't gone the way the administration said and others 
said it was going to go. In fact, I think we’re in more trouble today 
than we've ever been in Iraq."

Leaks: Responding to reports that Dick Cheney authorized Scooter Libby 
to leak classified information to bolster support for the war, 
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said this morning 
that the vice president may have committed a crime. "If Vice President 
Cheney has, in fact, ordered the leaking of ... intelligence 
information, that means he has to step aside," Dean told CNN. "We don't 
know if it's true, but he has been accused of it. If it's true, he has 
to step aside."

Abramoff: Over the weekend, Time became the first news outlet to 
publish a photograph showing George W. Bush with disgraced GOP lobbyist 
Jack Abramoff. The photo comes from an event in May 2001 in which the 
president met with Abramoff client Raul Garza, who was the chairman of 
the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas at the time. As Time explains, 
the White House initially denied that it had any record of any such 
meeting. The White House is still refusing to turn over the 
Bush-Abramoff photos in its collection, but it now concedes that the 
Time photograph is legitimate. "The president has taken countless, tens 
of thousands of pictures at home and abroad over the last five years," 
Scott McClellan tells Time. "As we've said previously a photo like this 
has no relevance to the Justice Department's investigation." Although 
Abramoff is little more than a speck in the background in the photo, 
Time says the lobbyist had closer contact with Bush right after the 
picture was taken: "Abramoff has told friends, 'I was standing right 
next to the window and after the picture was taken, the president came 
over and shook hands with me, and we chatted and joked.'" Time says 
that it has seen a photograph of that exchange, too.

-- Tim Grieve
Joan Opyr, Northern Idaho Editor
New West Magazine
www.newwest.net
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