Indiana Gazette from Indiana, Pennsylvania • 6

Viewpoint Tuesday, October 3, 2006 Pbq 6 I' VE GOT TO IT Bnhtmro (Hazeite Established 1890 Published by The Indiana Printing Publishing Company President and Publisher HUTKI.UTTBI Secretary and Assistant Treasurer STACK 6. fiOTTFUEKOI Treasurer and Assistant Secretary JOSEPH L8EARY Vice President and General Manager LHMtittoy PUMW 19130 PUMAM. 137fr200Q "The Gazette wants to be the friend of every man. the promulgator of all that's right, a welcome guest in the home. We want to build up, not tear down, to help, not to hinder; and to assist every worthy person in the community without reference to race, religion or politics.

Our cause will be the broadening and bettering of the county's interests." Is administration better than satire? MAUREEN D0WD 7 No GOP-style Contract for Democrats Borat movie or the Bush White House. Let's compare and contrast: At a Southern society dinner, an etiquette coach teaches Borat how to excuse himself to go to the bathroom. But when he returns to the table with a toilet doggie bag. no one laughs. W.

and Karl Rove "shared an array of fart jokes." Wood-vvard writes. A White House aide put a rov that made Boral Sagdiyev. the Kazakh television reporter with the bushy mustache and cheap gray suit, showed up at the White House last week with an invitation for the man he calls the "mighty US. warlord" He wanted to invite "Premier George Walker Bush," along with "other American dignitaries" like Mel Gibson and O.J. Simpson, to a screening of his new documentary about his anti-Semitic, misogynistic.

scatological trek across Ameri MORTON KONDRACKE Maureen Dou-d writes a column for The New York Times. The Uth anniversary of the Republicans' 1394 "Contract with America" came and went on Wednesday without a JOuft Democratic counterpart. And there won't be one. Instead. Democratic House and Senate leaders held yet another press conference to denounce the Republican Congress' "rubber-staniptng the Bush administration's misguided agenda." Despite repeated urging from various quarters, including from former President Bill Clinton, that the party needs to make clear what it stands for and not just againsr.

Democrats contend that off-year elections are referenda on the party in power and that a Democratic alternative agenda would only provide targets lor the (iOP to attack. lust to underscore rhe point, the Senate Democratic leaderships "war room" sent out an e-mail de hudger increases, middle-class tax cuts and term limits for members of Congress. It's undoubtedly true that the GOP won the election largely because of disgust with Democratic management the failure of Clinton's health care reform plan and congressional scandals but the contract did provide a legislative road map for the GOP once it won a 52 -seat victory and had to help govern the country. This year. Democrats have issued a two-page positive agenda.

"New Direction for America." but there's been no Capitol steps rally, and the document has all the earmarks of heing just a handout designed to he an answer to the question. "But what do Democrats stand fur?" It calls for "beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006." doubling U.S. special forces "to de- nut the possibility of eliminating President Rush's tax cuts. Separately, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Fmanuel (111.) has co-written a 200-page book.

"The Plan." with a former Clinton White House colleague, Bruce Reed, which does lay nut a positive agenda; although it. too, is loaded with anti-Bush invective and is short on bipartisan outreach. The book's "big ideas for America" include "universal citizen service' that calls for all Americans between 18 and 25 to spend three months learning civil defense procedures, "universal child health care" coverage and "universal retirement savings" that requires all employers to offer 401 (k) plans to their workers. The book also advances Fmanuel tax reform plan that calls for reducing the number of tax brackets from six to three, guaranteeing that all families with incomes under 100.000 pay only a 10 percent rate and taxing capital gains and dividends at the earner's income tax rate an increase from 15 percent to. presumably, 35 percent fur high-bracket earners.

Fmanuel clearly thinks his party needs a positive message this year otherwise he would not have written the book but he told me that 2006 is still shaping up to be a "normal off-year "referendum" election. Factoring in the post-2000 Census gerrymandering of seats. Democrats would seem to be just on the edge of the 15 seats they need to take the House. A positive message of purpose saying where they'd lead instead of just how much trouble they'd inflict on Bush could push them over the top. Maybe Democrats don't need a Contract, but they could use a plan.

Morton Kondrocke is editor of Roll (jill. His column is syndicated by rhe Newspaper Enterprise Association. claring that "much hype surrounds the 1994 Contract with America. The (ion-tract is often incorrectly credited with playing a large role in the Republican victory in the midterm elections. Evidence shows that this was not, in fact, the case: Candidates did not campaign on the Contract with America, and most Americans were unfamiliar with the document's existence." Still, its a fact thai then-House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, gathered 337 GOP members and candidates on rhe West Front of the Capitol on Sept.

27. 1994. and issued a ID-plank platform that included welfare reform, a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, tort reform, defense siniy Osama Bin laden and terrorist networks like al-Oaida" and upgrading homeland securiry. It pledges to block a congressional pay raise until the narion's minimum wage is raised, to make college tuition tax-deductible, to foster energy independence, to force Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and to "enact real pension reform to protect employees' financial security from CF.O corruption and mismanagement." The document says nothing about economic policy, although Rep. Charlie Rangel.

who's in line to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if the Democrats take over, said he has not ruled a flatulence sound under Karl's chair for the senior staff meeting on July 7. When they learned of the terror attacks in London, the prank was postponed. But several weeks later, "the device was placed under Rove's chair and activated during the senior staff meeting. Everyone laughed." Borat likes to wrestle guys naked. Karl liked to show W.

his battery-powered "Redneck Horn," blasting obscenities and insults like "I Icy. hogneck. who taught you how to drive? in a Southern drawl. Family values in Borat comic portrait of Kazakhstan are reflected by his sister, an incestuous hooker the town rapist: a cow in the bedroom: and rhe annual Pamplona-like "Running of the Jew." Woodward writes about Bush family values, or the "Running of the WASP" Even though Poppy Bush found his old GOP nemesis Donald Rumsfeld "arrogant, self-important, too sure of himself and Machiavellian," the author notes. W.

chose Rummy as defense chief, was a chance to prove his father wrong." Borat had a fantasy life in which he would bag literally Pamela Anderson and yoke her happily ever after to a plow on his farm. Dick Cheney had a fantasy life in which he would bag Saddam's WMI by occupying Iraq. In July 2003. Vice and Scooter Libby pored over fragments of intelligence intercepts, trying to figure out where on earth those elusive WML) were. Woodward notes that Cheney Matters even called the chief weapon hunter with satellite coordinates for possible hidden caches.

Borat thinks Pamela is silly to object to animal torture, just as Vice thinks the press is silly to object to prisoner torture. After much chaos. Bcuat gives up on Pamela and marries a prostitute. After much chaos, and even though I wants Rummy out. W.

sticks with him at Vice's insistence. No doubt. For lowbrow antics and silly stunts. W. is the clear winner Respcc'.

ca, followed by a cocktail party summit meeting, no doubt featuring Kazakh-mopolitans made with fermented horse urine. "We ll make discussion of cooperation between the two countries at Hooters." Borat told a befuddled White House guard. Borat, of course, is Sacha Baron Cohen, the successor to Peter Sellers, a wildly original and brainy Cambridge grad and observant few from a distinguished British family. His HBO characters, the rapper All G. the rash ion reporter Bruno, and Borat.

collide with reality, 'exposing prejudice and puric- ttirlng pomposity. 'The real Kazakhstan dictator was honored by President Bush at a state dinner last week. Nursultan Nazarbayev may have a corrupt and authoritarian regime where political opponents have been known to die very, very suddenly, but, hey, he's got oil and he's an ally in the war on tenor. Res pec', as Ali would say. So Cohen popped up as well, loping around D.C to promote his new movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The satirist held a news conference in front of the Kazakh Embassy as real officials inside fumed to proclaim that any protestations that Kazakhstan treats women equally or tolerates all religions are "disgusting fabrications" by "evil nitwits" in rival Uzbekistan.

Cohen is a genius at turning reality into farce, taking lowbrow humor to high places, but he has met his match in W. With the publication of parts of the classified intelligence report showing that the Bush administration has expanded the terrorist threat, as well as the books "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward. "Hubris" by Michael Isikoff and David Com. and "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks, all detailing the bumbling and infighting of Bush officials on Iraq, it's a tossup as to where we can find the must ludicrous, offensive and juvenile behavior in the new War lifted lid on long-simmering animosities CHARLEY REESE there for decades. Didn't anybody in Washington ever wonder why Saddam Hussein killed so many people? He was always a thug and a killer, but even killers don't waste bullets and poison gas unless they have a reason to do so.

Saddam, like his predecessors, was constantly trying to prevent the Kurds and Shiites from overthrowing him. Now, with no dictator to suppress them, they are kilting each other. I would say that when more than ft, 000 people arc killed in two months, it's about as close to a civil war as you can get. I cannot think of any logical reason why anyone in Washington thought that we could remove a dictatorship that had been in place in one form or A deluge of experts, attracted by government money, is drowning Washington. So many elected and appointed officials know even less than the phony experts that its like a gold-rush town for the briefcase-toting fast-talkers.

You. however, don't need to be an expert phony or genuine to figure out the broad outlines of the problems in the world. A simple dose ot common sense will do the job. U't's take Iraq, for example. This is a country artificially created by the British in the heyday of their colonial empire.

Arbitrarily included were Kurds, Sunnis and Shines, "lhe British put the Sunnis in charge under various dictators who kept a hd on the aspirations of The proper answer to that is: "In the first place, bro. I didn't break it. You did. and the only solution is to recognise that there is no solution. Not everything that breaks can be repaired.

Our choice is to leave now. with 2.700 dead and 20.000 wounded, or linger on until there are 5,000 dead and 35.000 wounded and then leave." Eventually, after we leave, a new dictatorship will emerge, probably a Shiite version. The Shiites might keep the trappings of democracy like Fgypt. but then? will be no question about who runs the show. They will have a strong secret police and an army to shut down the dissidents.

Hopefully by then we will have elected some people who know the difference between con artists and real experts whose expertise is grounded on personal experience and a knowledge of ihe language, culture and history of the areas for which they claim knowledge. Then, when we find a basket from which are coming the sounds of snakes, we won't he so foolish as to take the lid off and then be surprised when the snakes dop't magically turn into bunny rabbits In the meantime, use your common sense. Ask yourself just what it is that America's young men and women are dying for. To make Iraq a happy place? To make Israel feel safer? To help corporations with insider connections get richer? Not one of those reasons is worth the life of a camel, much less a human being. Write to Charley Reese at P.O.

Box 2446, Orlando, h'L 32802. Charley Reese's column if distributed by king Features Syndicate. another since the founding of the country and that a parliamentary democracy would bloom instantly like a lotus in a pond. To further complicate matters, there are Kurds in eastern Syria, eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. Do you think Syria or Iran, and must especially Turkey, will tolerate an independent Kurdistan on its borders? No likely.

Discussion in Washington is usually earned on at the level of college freshmen after several rounds of beers. The Republican answer to its own fiasco is to say: "OK, you don't like the way the president is handling it. What's your solution?" the majority Shines and the independence craving Kurds. The hd was kept on by brute force through a succession of dictators, ending with Saddam Hussein. It was like a jack-in-ihe -box.

and when the Bush administration took the lid off. nut popped the factions. Are the Kurds going to give up iheir aspirations for independence? Not likely. Are the Sunnis going io go quietly into i he sunset with nothing? Not likely. Are the Shnles, after decades nf repression, going to come forth with kindness and forgiveness for their former oppressors? Not likely The conflict we see playing out has been LETTER TO THE EDITOR Leons thank community the I Mnl iltctlM It once again and is walking now! She looks forward to seeing all of you when she is again able to come back to the restaurant.

We have experienced a miracle from God. who is our strength and provider. We also have felt the embrace of a loving community. Again, thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts. My wife, Claudia, and would like to thank all of the people and businesses of Indiana and Indiana County for the outpouring of so many kindnesses since our accident in Mexico last May.

Though we suffered terrible losses, we have been lifted up by the gen erous support bom our local community. Your prayers, monetary support and many other gestures of love for us have helped us through this difficult time. CUudia continues to improve each day. She is at home Guidelines for letter writers Writers should avoid name-calling. Form letters and automated "canned" e-mail will not be accepted.

Letters should be limited to 350 words. All letters are subject to editing. Letter writers are limited to one submission a month. Tin dntHhw tor tottan nWel to Letters to the editor should be signed and include the writer's address and telephone number so the authenticity of the letter can be confirmed. No letters will be published anonymously.

Letters must be factual and discuss issues rather than personalities. Oct. 7. Lvttore ncthw4 fftot Dul MicaMrtltpaMttMl. Send letters to Mike Petersen, editorial page editor.

The Indiana Gazette. 899 Water St. Indiana. PA 15701 or by e-mail to mepetersenindianagazette.net. Indiana I WSXh.

Antonio Leon is the owner and operator of the Cozumel Restaurant in Indiana. THURSDAY fieri bowry. Woodward's real revelation WEDNESDAY Cal Thomas: Marsha Mercer. Scandal? Congress runs What scandal? against itself. COMING Unless clearly labeled "Gazette editorial." alt opinions on the Viewpoint Page are solely those of the authors..