Coulter: Using the sex card to sell the NeoCon Agenda

The puzzle for the intelligent reader is to pick out a thread of sanity in anything Ann Coulter writes. I have an advantage here because I raised five children and therefore recognize the ploys being dragged out from Ms. Coulter’s little box of tools. Yelling loudly when you have not a shred of justification is a strategy I have had to deal with many times. So is misdirection and fatuous assertions of authority. “Nicky’s Mom said we could” and “Dawn wanted us to roll the water balloons off the roof” make more sense when they are coming out of the mouths of individuals who have not yet begun preschool, however.
Ms. Coulter will use anything that will work. She has a lot at stake.
Ms. Coulter has managed to become a multimillionaire by accepting a job for which she is uniquely qualified. Those who employ her have a hard time finding candidates for this particular position because it demands an unusual intersection of personal skills and good looks combined with a sublime lack of rationality, ethical insight and good taste. At one time in the history of America public discourse followed rules of minimal civility. Maybe someday that will again be true.
The job Coulter fills is to provide a woman’s point of view; ‘commentary,’ attacking those who question any policy of the NeoCons. In case you are in doubt, the NeoCons are the esoteric, Straussian Illuminati-wanna-bes presently running our country right into the ground in hopes of solidifying a base of support and perpetuating their personal fortunes. Coulter’s astonishing and not even funny harangues are protected by the 1st Amendment and enabled by her cool good looks and ‘charming personality.’ They are intended to create the impression that women, at least some women, are on board while stifling objections from those who would normally have delighted in attacking her bizarre statements.
She is well aware that men, who comprise most of the world’s real commentators, are very reluctant to attack her as they doubtless would if she were less esthetically enhanced. Ever hopeful of getting lucky men dislike attacking attractive women. Biology, the unspoken driver of nearly all human action, trumps all. The NeoCons never miss a trick, a word that works rather well in this context.
In her most recent regurgitation of bizarre opinion Ms. Coulter asserts that Liberals love Saddam Hussein, likens them to insects, accuses them of being unable to think for themselves, compares Bill O’Reilly to Jesse Helms, and cites George S. Patton, Jr. as an authority. And in that case she is not wrong. I have a poster of him, one of my heroes on my office wall. But he would have despised Coulter; Patton was a true patriot.
From there she paints the happy picture of the citizens of Iraq recalling a governor within three years and accuses a fellow female columnist of having PMS because all Iraqis are not endlessly grateful for our kind attentions to their civil liberties. These things take time, Coulter says. Someday the Iraqis will be sending thank you notes.
According to Coulter all Liberals are evil and should be taken out and shot for treason. Not being a liberal I was originally amused.
No more.
It is a mistake to spend time trying to respond to what she says. It is time to pay attention to why she is employed, given a forum, and assured millions in compensatory perks.
Always follow the money. Most people involved in politics are there because of money, sex, or power. Money is infinitely fungible.
Ann Coulter is a tool. She is the most visible NeoCon female pundit and has provided an essential service to the interlinking collation of special interests that drive the present agenda to place a monarchial type of government in America; with them in perpetual charge, of course. The trappings of an imperial presidency are falling into place.
According to their faith, Straussians are ‘destined to rule.’ What they are doing now is simply acting out the logic of their personally constructed agenda. We can usefully refer to it as the NeoConning Manifesto.
It does not surprise me that they have tried to accomplish such an end. The power hungry will be always with us and Straussians are not very different than those who preceded them. What surprises me is that those who are really committed to individual freedom and the vision that is America have shown all of the intestinal fortitude of golf balls in opposing them.
The real Republicans cower in their golf clubs, looking for more balls or trying to find a way to profit from the coming tide. The Liberals just look clueless or try to find a way to profit from the coming tide. If they have balls they have yet to find them.
The present tense of this little melodrama became possible at the same time that Nixon, with an unadulterated stupidity only he could have summoned, instituted Wage and Price Controls. At the same time that Republican thinkers all over the country dropped out of that Party a subset of these disgruntled individuals formed a new political movement. The political vehicle was the Libertarian Party. The policy that originated in those now main-stream think tanks is now the current political rhetoric for both parties. With exceptions.
Into this Nixonian power vacuum was drawn those who are now at the core of the NeoCons; former liberals who brought with them the tactics that they had learned in hard scrabble socialism. Their commitment was to gaining and exercising power. These include the Kristols and their close friends.
Attractive nuisances always draw flies. The corrupting potentials of power are too well known to be restated here.
It was not a conspiracy except in the classical understanding of that term. Those who grasped for power over others, having common goals, have drawn together in a cooperative effort to subvert the checks and balances still remaining to us from the Founders.
So here we sit, on the edge of an American fascist state looking at more of the same old Dems, in desperate need of a hero to lead us back towards Liberty.
Mostly, when you wish for something it doesn’t happen, but this time it may well be different. The grasp of the Neocons on America is not yet complete, and if we find that certain someone Anne Coulter may be writing obituaries in Podunk, Idaho at this time next year.

The Lurid Fantasy Life of Ann Coulter

It is not true that Ann Coulter’s last date was with Joseph McCarthy. That is outrageous. Ann may well be fascinated with and obsessed by Joseph McCarthy; he may well be her fantasy soul mate, divided from her forever by death a la Somewhere in Time, but she never dated him in this reality. No one ever accused Joe McCarthy of being a child molester. The man died on May 2, 1957 when Ann was just a very small girl.
In the interests of truth in reportage we looked for evidence of Ann’s age and found reports varying between December 8, 1949 to the same day in 1966. Since the right to lie about your age is the First Amendment of the Woman’s Bill of Rights we dropped the issue.
Anyway, her regular escort and the man with whom she spends time is Matt Drudge. That also raises questions, but again, despite the present struggle on the part of Republicans of the Neo-Con predilection to install monitoring devices in our bedrooms we will not inquire as to the specifics of her relationship with a man who is commonly known to be as gay as Oscar Wilde.
In her current book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, which has carried her from the ghetto of political punditry onto the normally politically neuter pages of People Magazine, Ann continues her political bodice ripping by taking the specific accusations Joe hurdled at individuals and with collectivist aplomb that would elicit envy from Joseph Stalin, denounces in its varied entirety all individuals who are Liberal, Moderate Republican, and Democrat as guilty without benefit of trial of what was, the last time I checked, a capital offense; treason. I did not see a mention of Libertarians. But I am sure she also denounces them. Not that anyone pays much attention to Libertarians although when Ann tried to run for Congress as a Libertarian from her home in Connecticut the motley Libertarians united in saying, NO to Ann. Ann went on to describe the group as nerdy types still sleeping on Star Wars sheets and living in their mothers’ basements. True but unkind.
Coulter occupies a curious placement in the NeoCon attack strategy. She is an attractive female who is registered Republican and is ready, willing, and able to take on search and destroy missions against other women. There are a few others but Coulter is the Right’s shrillest feminine voice for those who are the least rational and most inclined to hysterical belief in conspiracy theories of all kinds. Most Republican women, members of NFRW, would suffer heart palpitations if they were subjected to her in the pure form. The Left’s feminine voice of hysteria can be nearly as shrill but there are more of them and they are generally ignored. However, they, unlike Coulter, do not write best selling books and gather a cult following, mostly male and mostly miserably single.
Coulter’s ‘discourse’ depends not on facts but on the emotional wattage of her attacks used with the scalpel-like precision of a machine-gun in a Terminator movie. According to Coulter women should never have gotten the right to vote and should never enjoy equal rights. She was bounced as a columnist for National Review for calling on America to, " invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” in one memorably typical moment of testosterone overload and collectivist excess.
Collectivism is ugly, no matter who uses it as a means to demean.
Not that she depends entirely on collectivist tactics. Coulter is not above whimpering like a woman and having tantrums when such tactics will work.
Faced with the specter of a real debate with a fellow conservative who has been critical of her disregard for fact checking and rationality she was heard whispering to the TV host, Barry Nolan on his show last week, Night Beat, out of Brookline, Mass., that they could not have the rebuttal speaker previously scheduled and waiting in the wings. Fear and tears trembled in her words, which she did not realize the potential speaker could hear. The speaker, Dan Bouchers, was cut immediately. Ladies must be protected, after all. You can learn more about what Dan thinks on his site: coulterwatch.com.
Bouchers has a record of ignoring Coulter’s pulchritudinous appearance to focus on what she says. Most media hosts are not made of such stern stuff.
The issue that should draw the intelligent mind is the means Coulter uses to accomplish her success – which has not been to encourage dialogue and move discourse but to fatten her own pocketbook at the expense of intellectual honesty and a decent regard for civility.
Ann uses fear and hate as weapons and hides behind her appearance. One wonders what would have happened if instead of looking like Anna Nicole Smith and sounding like Adolph Hitler she had looked like him and sounded like her. One wonders.
In the final analysis we speak the truth more from what we do than from what we say. What Coulter has been doing is profiting from selling the rhetoric of hate. While the eyes of the credulous are on her bottom, her eyes are firmly on the bottom line.

Anne Coulter: Getting rich by destroying freedom for women

Anne Coulter wears skirts so short you can see her brains. Or you could if she had any. She is the best argument that the foamy-mouthed Right has made for the immediate passage of the long delayed ERA.
Nasty? Yes, and like all humor it arrives at a truth seen but not spoken.
Coulter is the unwoman prime of this generation; the latest and least representative of a species of women who have carried the ball, and presumably the coffee, for an establishment that wants more than anything to deny women the seats they earn at the table of power and their place in deciding for themselves how their lives will be lived.
The ERA is history but it is also the future. Americans assume equality for men and women by an overwhelming percentage. A recent poll from Opinion Research Corporation found that 96% of all Americans believe that men and women should have equal rights even as the Foamy-mouthed Right, and Libertarians deny it to women by blocking the passage of the ERA.
Congress will be taking up the question again. So far the measure has 186 cosponsors, nearly enough to push it past the blockage put up by Republicans.
That, and other factors mean it is about to happen despite Anne Coulter.
The Good Old Boys needed a titular woman who would obfuscate the truth. They found a real tool in Coulter to replace the sad, silly spokeswoman they had found in Phyllis Schlafly.
They still use carefully forged campaigns of disinformation and managed pressure groups to arrest the future. Coulter has rung in new variations on the theme. Such women are conscious tools of the GOB network. They have a long and dishonorable history in American politics.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, along with other leaders of the original American Women’s Movement, were at first astonished to be sniped at and then virulently attacked by women of privilege. Why would those who had so much grudge other women, most of them far less wealthy, a voice in public affaires and the right to their own lives and property? The Madams of Privilege had not been asked to give up their soirees, their laundrywomen, their coachmen, and their wealth. Why would they seek to deny working women the rights of self-determination?
The answer is not nice.
The fact is that there are always individuals out there looking for the benefits of public acclaim.
Therefore with women arming for war Phyllis Schlafly still tries to frighten us by urging mothers not to allow their daughters to risk joining the military. Anne Coulter goes farther, asserting that women should not be allowed to vote – while voting herself and enjoying all of the privileges of power.
These MOPs accept the privileges of fame and adulation for destroying the future of women unborn. It is the best job they could find – and the perks have been very good.
America has birthed many famous women, women who poured lifetimes into finding better truths for all of us.
Such is the fame of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Margaret Sanger and the host of other women who redefined the world in which we live. Fame is a heady drug for some, a tool for others.
Mother Theresa could tell you about the benefits of fame. The best holders of fame convert it into movements that change the world. The best are not about having the perks. They are about service.
This is about the MOPs. They are not good enough to make it to the upper echelons in their chosen marketplace as proponents for women - but they mightily want the flavor of fame and the favors fame brings.
So the GOBs sign them up. It is easier to join the Good Old Boys and shoot down those struggling for equality than it is to fight city hall. There are always those who valued the advantages of fame and wealth over being particularly discriminating about how they accomplish those ends. Fame and money are aphrodisiacs for self-love, too.
The subtext of GOB Babes like Phyllis Schlafly and Anne Coulter is not just, “to the back of the bus,” but, “on your back, bitch.” Not that they would fail to be outraged if they were treated like that themselves. Anne expects to be treated like a celebrity, meaning she does not expect to do the right thing herself, just to talk about it.
They have changed their strategies but their ends are the same.
Anne Coulter in particular has used the FemCard. She is blond by choice, razor thin and dresses like a two bit whore. This allows her the natural protection of femininity, armoring her from males on the left. All males hope they might get lucky, that is simple biology. Leftist males are no different.
The issue is what comes out of her mouth.
She has a mouth like a toilet and a mind to match. She calls for death, destruction, hate, and female servitude to the principle of masculinity. Her book, Slander was well named. It marks what we must hope is the low tide mark for journalistic standards. The challenge to the reader is finding statements that are true, not those that are false. We can hope that this attack of the undead of the Right will die in oncoming light, leaving the field open to a productive discourse between the decent majority.
Think of the ERA as the garlic that will put Anne Coulter back in her coffin. There, she cannot offend.



Lexicon: To view the whole Lexicon go to: americanrevival.ws

Blogeskreig – To make your point on line using the power of pointed opinion. (Example, Trent Lott was Blogeskrieged)

FemCard – the Female equivalent of the Black card.

Flackista - A flack of the female variety who is running interference for the NeoCons. Well paid and not much competition in the field.

Foamy-mouthed Right – You know, those people who keep sneaking into our bedrooms to comment. Makes you wonder why they don’t take up bowling.

GOB – Good Old Boys – See the bathroom next to the Congressional Dining room after they have lunch with their chief lobbyists.

GOB Babes – The flutter-eyed and very willing females who give their all for those in power – on the Right. (See knee-padders for reference from the left.)

MOP – Madams of Privilege – Women who want to bake cookies and want you to use their recipe for your cookies, too.

Pundititus – Talking so much and being paid so much that you start thinking your farts are commentary. Condition appears in all political viewpoints.

Unwoman – A woman who adopts the behaviors of masculinity without ever taking up the behaviors of a woman.

The Rules for NeoCons
as played by Karl Rove
An exercise in political satire protected by the 1st Amendment
(At least there used to be a 1st Amendment)
By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Karl Rove started life with a dream. That was an image of him, sitting at his ease in the White House enjoying the perks of power along with the good life. Instead of collecting baseball cards as a kid the chief Bush strategist collected cards with the smiling faces of congressmen, presidents and men like Machiavelli. He read every word ever published about politics before hitting puberty. Instead of memorizing baseball stats he memorized the minutia of political intrigue. His motivations were entirely personal. He is not an idealist and he is certainly not an ideologue like his buddies Irving and William Kristol, the most prominent proponents of Straussianism* Karl Rove didn’t need a justification to lie and cheat his way to power. He just did it. He is a natural supercharged by the trauma of a boyhood of social deprivation and exceptional nerdism.
Karl Rove is a practical guy who never lets ethical irrelevancies confuse him.
Karl Rove wanted to win at any cost. He worked hard to accomplish his goal. He wanted to win so much he built his own president and reformatted the unspoken rulebook for acceptable behavior in America’s political life. Some of you may have been unaware there were rules, given what has gone on in government for the last 200 years. But there were a few.
Before there were things politicians did not do because those things were too slimy. Now, thanks to Karl Rove, there are no limits. This innovation became itself an enforcer of his power. Liberals duck under desks, quiver, and wet themselves when Karl Rove walks by. So do Republicans and the minor bureaucracies employed in think-tanks - if they are smart. If Rove’s mother was alive she might, too.
I became interested in Karl Rove through tracing his relationship with one of his buddies, John Fund, formerly of the Wall Street Journal. Rove taught John everything he knows about the politics of winning. John borrowed the book and forgot to give it back, a habit he has along with nabbing all the goodie bags at conferences. That is how we happened to find it to read when Morgan cleaned up John’s apartment when she moved in with him in 2001. Karl has now sent John back to Dirty Tricks 1A to repeat his early lessons. John messed up big time by not keeping Morgan quiet and returning the book.
I was amazed at how similar the two men really are. Both collected cards on politicians when they were still in junior high school. Both were very nerdy and asocial and used their college years to get involved in real politics. Both were entirely focused on achieving their goals. I briefly wondered if they were in fact two personas caught in the same body or one persona using two bodily entities. Unlikely, though I have yet to meet anyone who has seen them together.
But on to the real issue.
Here in a nutshell (curiously appropriate nomenclature) are the Rules for NeoCons with revisions and additions by Karl Rove.


1. When the guy on the playground looks like he is going to win get someone bigger to kick him from behind. Snitch to the teacher pretending you are the victim.
Rove - You don’t have to tell the truth and fear is a great way of culling the
potential competition. Rehearse your responses when questioned and do not
deviate from the script. Make sure you have your own set of ‘special agents’ from
the government on tap.

2. Spread nasty lies about your adversary. Do this in the strictest confidence. Lies will not surface until their origin is lost.
Rove - They may never know why they lost. If they find out see No. 1.

3. Study the game. There are lots of interesting ways to cheat. Be inventive.
Rove – Cheating means never having to say you are sorry you lost.

4. Cite specious authority. “Cause I said,” while adequate when backed by enough guns or political thugs is not enough in the early game. On the playground citing the authority of the principal may briefly save you from a drubbing by the class mate who caught you cheating at Four Square but citing that authority when invading a foreign country won’t work. You have to be presidential to use exhortations of patriotism to justify your own abuses. Even then such justifications may need to be backed up with unspoken threats, personal or political.
Rove – Keep a pile of flags on hand along with pictures of the Twin Towers and religious memorabilia. Know your audience. Tell the speech writer what you need.

5. Lay down a thick pile of studies from authorities. This may seem like a continuation of No. 4. but it requires some very different institutions and kinds of individuals. These need to be thought out and in place in advance. See Kristol, either one, for application of Straussianism for justifications from ‘destiny’ and ‘esoteric insights.’ See purveyors of other useful faith-based ideologies, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and (Forcing God’s Hand.) The Rapture of Republicanism), Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, and the clutches of brains at the constellation of think-tanks spawned by Libertarianism and the Rapture Right.
Rove – Useful for keeping the less brain-dead tools in line. You can trust them
once they are on the payroll.


As you can see, it is really a very simple rule book with only minor variations applied with unswerving ruthlessness. I became very familiar with the NeoCon rules while being masticated by the attentions of the forenamed Rove student, John Fund. It is important to remember that these people tell you exactly what they are going to do to you by flinging accusations that you are doing that to them. Some people call that projection. Listen carefully. That may well be your only warning of what is coming. So when John Fund ran around claiming there was a massive left-wing conspiracy aimed at destroying him by using the IRS and all of the related forces of evil we know what he really meant. Of course, he was a piker compared to Karl Rove, but he was, after all, only the student.

The NeoCons function as a dispersed network of individuals working within a series of organizations some of which were founded for the purpose and some of which have been co-opted.
So who are the NeoCons? What are the depth, breadth and scope of their operation? How does the interesting early history of such virtual unknowns as Harry Browne and Michael Emerling Cloud relate to the fund raising plans of Karl Rove? What are the interlocks between the affinity groups of the Los Angeles Cabal of the Federalist Society and the Fabiani Society in New York? How does it all mesh with the Texas-Two-Step Illiterati? What is the story on the voting machines, their ownership and programming?
All questions will eventually be answered. Soon. Promise

Go read the NeoCon Lexicon of Larceny on americanrevival.ws

A Republican Woman Speaks out


As a Republican I have long worried about the erosion of freedom in America. It was a concern for freedom that propelled me into politics when I was eleven, having read Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater. It was a desire to leave a more civil America for my five children that has kept me in politics all of my life.
Many things changed for all of us on September 11th. From the place of unity and trust that followed the tragedy of September 11th we have moved to a state of unprecedented hostility, division and fear.
Remember for a moment the outpouring of compassion from the world and the way we came together during those days when volunteers from every walk of life throughout the world worked to aid survivors in New York. That is the real America, the America that each of us loves and trusts; the America that speaks a vision beyond the partisanship of politics and inspired the world as a shining beacon of hope.
That trust had been used by the Bush administration to cancel the Bill of Rights and install a federal monarchy. The Bush White House has betrayed both America and the Republican Party. No real Republican can support George W. Bush.
The steady growth of government is drowning the hopes of women and men from all parties and all parts of our nation. Using the rhetoric of freedom the White House is calling up the reality of fascism. None of us is immune.
As a Republican woman I did not imagine that the Patriot Act would be used in a focused attempt to destroy my family. That is, however, what happened. Sometimes freedom becomes very personal. Our story will be your story if we cannot change the direction our nation has taken.
We are no longer safe from our own government.
In our case this administration allowed one of its political operatives disguised as a journalist access to private records legally protected by the courts. The Patriot Act makes this possible. National security was not an issue. The political operative in question was seeking to evade charges of domestic violence. The abuser’s name was John Fund. Here is how this administration uses its power.
Normally, adoption records are sealed unless ordered by the court. Getting access is impossible, even for those most closely involved. That is what the law says. But if you have the right connections with the NeoCons presently running our country into bankruptcy and corporate fascism you can get anything on anyone.
I have been a member of the National Federation of Republican Women since the early 1990s. My daughter is also a member – but I have learned some hard lessons in the past three years about those who are in charge of the Party that once was the shining hope of a generation inspired by Barry Goldwater and dedicated to individualism and civil liberties. I spent my entire adult life working for those ideals only to see the progress we had made redirected to line the pockets of those who gathered the power into their own grasping hands, laying the groundwork for an Imperial Federalism.
How did my daughter and I learn this had happened? The first inkling we had of just how far the Bush administration will go to protect its political operatives came from Eric Alterman’s article published in the Nation in June of ’03. In that article Alterman publishes information that we would ourselves be unable to access, information available only through the misuse of power.
My daughter, Morgan Pillsbury, was in a relationship with John Fund from October 1998 until she finally left him, preferring charges for domestic violence, in the spring of 2002. John Fund had been a NeoCon operative since he started working with Evans and Novak in the early 1980s after a brief stint with the Star. His potential thus revealed he was recruited. From there he moved on to the Wall Street Journal and worked there as a political operative for eighteen years. He has vacationed with Dick Cheney and remains in close contact with the White House.
The NeoCons do not care about issues of right and wrong. A study the ‘election strategies’ of Karl Rove reveal that slander, libel, and orchestrated events are standard operating procedure. Fund used his NeoCon connections to evade justice. This included eliciting cooperation from men like Eric Alterman. Alterman is no NeoCon, but he has the same kind of ego.
Alterman is only one in a series of journalists who cooperated with Fund and were rewarded for their cooperation with jobs from other NeoCon sources. Another journalist who recently killed a story was then immediately hired by the Wall Street Journal, a NeoCon institution.
Let’s examine how Alterman’s hit piece was assembled.
“In a signed affidavit, the woman in question--whose true age is 36, seven years older than was reported, and who was born Carolyn Anne Barteaux but carries a passport (a copy of which was provided to me by Fund) under the name Carolyn Anne Pillsbury and now goes by Morgan Francis Pillsbury--withdraws any accusations of physical abuse, accusations that resulted in Fund's arrest.”
The entire article is a montage of arrogance and unsubstantiated accusations not just according to me but according to the journalists who bothered to do research. Alterman’s article says more about his quality as a journalist than about my daughter.
Here, Alterman implies that the changes of name indicate a questionable history, raising questions of devious intent. But the facts actually say something very different. When my daughter was between five and six she was adopted by my new husband, something that happens every day. She became Carolyn Anne Kellett. When my daughter was twelve I allowed my parents to adopt her. She had been living with them and they wanted this very much. She became Carolyn Anne Pillsbury. She continued to visit me during the summers. When my daughter turned 18 she changed her given name to Morgan because she loved horses, and took Francis as a middle name to honor my father, Dr. Arthur Francis Pillsbury.
California allows name change by usage. But to get a passport you have to jump through hoops. So, while she used the name Morgan for everything else her passport remained Carolyn Anne. She has used ‘Morgan Francis’ unfailingly since she was 19.
But how did John Fund get copies of my daughter’s adoption records and passport? My daughter kept the passport elsewhere and never mentioned her previous name to Fund. Neither she nor I possess a copy of the original birth certificate and her baby book in which the name is written is in storage at my home in California. But Alterman says he was shown a copy of the passport and published the previous name.
The law on passports is similar to the law on adoption records. These records are not available. Accessing them is a felony. The only way Fund could have gotten it therefore is through his political NeoCon connections. In a deposition of Fund taken in New York on October 19th Fund admitted to having destroyed the documents that would prove how he acquired these records. More discovery is in motion.
The withdrawal of charges Alterman cites did not happen. Morgan was physically forced to sign a statement dictated by Fund. The man who had so often beaten her into unconsciousness told her he would do it again if she did not cooperate. He also threatened to harm me, her mother, I later learned. Such coerced statements are void for obvious reasons. Since I heard my daughter being abused and saw her injuries I was able to rebut this document myself and have done so under penalty of perjury. I was not the only one to hear her abused; there is another witness.
Fund and his attorneys have declined to depose me. His chief attorney, Fred Kessler is a partner at Wollmuth, Maher & Deutch, LLP in New York.
The Alterman article also mentions a “close friend of Fund’s” who supplied “documents now posted on the Internet—that demonstrate to almost any fair-minded person that Fund is probably the victim of a deeply disturbed person.”
The ‘close friend’ is my former husband, Craig Franklin, the only person to have access to a transcript from a now settled lawsuit. That transcript was never filed and so is not available through the court. The transcript is also misidentified. To use the document in this way is a felony and has now been reported to the court having jurisdiction in the matter.
The failure to do adequate research on this point opens both Alterman and the Nation to litigation and Morgan and I have filed against them in New York. We were urged to do this by fair minded journalists who were appalled at Alterman’s article and his arrogant disregard of the truth and fair journalistic practice.
The relationship between Fund and Franklin is also unusual.
In the spring of 2001 Morgan took stock of her life and made some changes. She recognized she had said things that were hurtful and untrue about friends and family and wrote letters to those she could have harmed thereby and apologized. Many of us have had similar experiences and changed our lives for the better. God calls us to such self examination and amendment. Doing so is not a sign of mental disorder but of growing maturity. I received one such apology from my daughter.
Why would Morgan’s step father, a man who raised her and my other children and named them as his children for all purposes in his will supply a document to a man he barely knows? He had his reasons, and as with all other stories examining it is revealing.
John Fund and Craig Franklin are not close friends but they are co-conspirators, cooperating to suppress the facts in two separate cases that they knew could cost them financially and professionally. Craig’s only other previous contact with Fund was to try to use me to pressure John to get an Oped on achieving world peace published in the Wall Street Journal in around 1994. In the Oped Craig urged that all world leaders be forced to exchange children with leaders from other countries. Craig said that John’s failure to find this idea appealing would make him responsible for the nuclear war that would doubtless ensue. To date that war has not started.
Craig’s great ideas also included a suicide hotline staffed by a computer that at the end of a lengthy menu suggested the depressed person become a libertarian activist. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
Common goals create cooperation between relative strangers. Discrediting me and my daughter with slander and libel was the goal they could best achieve through cooperation.
Craig supplied the documents because he was guilty of fraud related to our divorce and to cover the fact he is a sexual pervert who tried to live out his fantasies about young girls by exposing himself to my pubescent daughters and attempting to have sex with Morgan. I employed a private detective to provide documentation of his perversion and have that evidence. The law suit I was forced to settle because I ran out of money was over the fraud he had perpetrated and those records are available through the court in Santa Barbara.
A partnership of this kind is a criminal conspiracy and Craig is named as a defendant in the lawsuit now filed in New York.
Eric Alterman was one of a series of credulous and greed driven journalists and political hopefuls Fund and other NeoCons used in their campaign against us. The NeoCons use the same techniques politically.
The list of those who cooperated with Fund includes his former employer, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, his sometime sexual partner Gail Heriot, a law professor from the San Diego University of Law, and more than 30 others. That pleading is now under review by the court in New York because, we were told by the clerk of the court, many of the charges for which we provided documentation were felonies.
The strategies used by Fund and other NeoCon operatives such as Karl Rove are simple. Lie. Lie some more. Manufacture events. Lie again. Coerce silence. Bribe where necessary. When that fails violence is always an option. The NeoCons have been profoundly successful in converting the power of government into a means for private self enrichment using these techniques. They grabbed for power like the most ill-mannered brat in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
They have destroyed our trust along with lives and so much else.
Any tool misused can become a weapon. The economic tools for returning power to the individual, privatization, and those like it, have become the means to transfer control and wealth into the hands of the few. These tools were originated by what we call the Freedom Movement.
In 1971 after Nixon imposed Wage and Price Controls thousands of people spontaneously left the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party was founded. The intellectual and political insights, founded in an understanding of markets and individualism, gave birth to a series of think tanks that have created the policy now used by both the Republican and Democratic parties.
But those tools have been misapplied. Instead of reducing the size of government by returning the choices and control to the individual those market tools have been applied to permit government to reach deeper into our pockets.
Those in the Movement saw it happening and did nothing. Their failure to demand that these powerful tools be properly applied is perhaps the most massive moral failure since the 1799 failure to sunset slavery. They chose to protect their 401Ks and remained silent or have become apologists for the Bush administration.
In this way the NeoCons converted the rhetoric of freedom that brought a generation into politics, creating privatization, deregulation, and outsourcing, into the means for establishing a totalitarian state. It is a tragedy for freedom.
It is a fact that within any market for human action the bad currency and bad behavior drive out the good. In the American system of government that means that bad ethics, the short term strategy of winning at all and any cost, has driven out the long term strategy of creating cooperative governance and a society of consent that rewards those who do the right thing.
The Bush administration is the logic of a course set through greed. John is one small but very useful cog in the NeoCon wheel that seeks to run the world for its own profit. The course set by the NeoCons can only end in the death of American honor and freedom.
This tragedy for our family is a microcosm of the fate awaiting all Americans and therefore transcends the personal and serves as a model for the warfare presently being waged against Americans and the entire world from those we believed we could trust.
However, in every crisis is also opportunity. Freedom remains the goal and the vision. Change is possible. The issue for those who love freedom should not be which bad choice wins the presidency but how we retake control of our lives.
Freedom that word so debased and misused still bespeaks a harbor of opportunity, hope and peace. The vision of America is still the destination that draws humanity through the fateful courses of time. But America must change its course to remain that shining light.
We must reject fear and relearn the lessons of Washington, Jefferson, and those other men and women of courage and vision who saw opportunity in a simple equality and honor in a clear sighted reliance on the plain truth.
When the autonomy of the individual to choose is respected each of us learns the lessons God placed before us. We are drawn by necessity to confront our own souls and convert our human yearnings into communities of consent.
The civil sector, the organizations through which we work, churches, charities, and associations, clubs and lodges, have been doing their good work despite the interferences of government. Through parents who home school, local charities who meet the needs of those who yearn for jobs, meals, shelter, homes and hope, through community sighted businesses and volunteers we are building a better tomorrow.
On September 11th thousands of American volunteers voted with their own lives for a world of community. From blood banks to food banks to tutoring for literacy we, the American people, are creating the future, not any president.
On November 2nd there will be an election. A man unworthy of our trust will win and America will lose. But on November 3rd we can begin again to make the vision of America real. Remember that when you are listening to the election results.