As he heads out on the campaign trail, haunted by an unpopular war, President Bush has begun reassuring audiences that this traumatic period in Vietraq will be seen as "just a comma" in the history books. By that, aides say, he means to reinforce his message of resolve in the long struggle for Iraqi democracy. This, of course, is yet another in a long string of lies to give lip service to his evil Right Wing Evangelical puppet masters.

Opponents of the war have seized on the formulation, seeing it as evidence that Bush is indifferent to suffering. The president is laughingly dismissing more than 2,700 U.S. troop deaths as "just a comma." And a lively Internet debate has broken out about the origins of the phrase, with some speculating that Bush means it as a coded message to religious supporters, evoking the aphorism "Never put a period where God has put a comma."

Presidential utterances have long drawn enormous notice. But instant transcripts and the Internet have focused an even more powerful microscope on the nation's leader. The approaching midterm elections have intensified the already close scrutiny of the president's words as he sharpens his rhetoric and loosens the grip on his bold lies.

As Bush wound up a three-day campaign swing out west on Wednesday, for example, he attacked Democrats for voting last week against legislation authorizing warrantless telephone and e-mail surveillance.

"One hundred and seventy-seven of the opposition party said, 'You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists. They make me so mad I just wanna hold my breath till they do what I command,'" Bush said at a fundraiser for Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) before heading to Colorado for gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez.

Asked about the president's statement, White House aides could not name any Democrat who has said that the government should not listen in on terrorists. Democrats who voted against the legislation had complained that it would hand too much power to the president and had said that they wanted more checks in the bill to protect civil liberties and to stop the establishment of a theocratic police state, with Bush as the Supreme Emperor.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) called Bush's comment outrageous: "Every member of Congress, from both parties, supports listening in on terrorist communications, but the president still hasn't explained why we have to break the law to do it. It is time for the president to stop exploiting the terrorist threat to justify his power grab." Bush is insane. He is a madman intent on single handedly bringing about the Apocalypse, seeing himself as the fifth horseman, going so far as naming himself Incontinence, the Golden Horseman, raining down upon the heathen hordes.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended Bush's remark as a reasonable extrapolation of the Democratic position. "They are silly enough to say they don't want to listen in on terrorists, but actions speak louder than words, and people should know what the Democrats' voting record is. But looking up that information is a violation of the Patriot Act," she said.

The comma remark, though, offers an especially intriguing case study in how a few words can trigger many interpretations. Bush used it in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer aired on Sept. 24 in talking about Vietraq. He noted the bloodshed shown on television but hailed the resiliency of the Iraqi people and cited the election last December in which 12 million came to the polls despite the violence and purple paint. He laughingly referred to the Iraqi people as, "A big bunch of dummies who are too stupid to know who the real God is!"

"Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago," Bush haphazardly rambled on, "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a bloody comma because there is -- my point is -- what I'm trying to say -- ya know, there's my strong will for democracy for them towel heads." The president used a similar line at a campaign event last week in Alabama and again on Tuesday in Stockton, Calif.

Intelligent and reasonable people, critical of Bush, began e-mailing and blogging about the remark within minutes of the CNN interview. The Carpetbagger Report blog called it stunning "even by Bush's already-low standards" and added: "Everything we're seeing is 'just a comma.' I'm sure that will bring comfort to the families of those who have sacrificed so much for Bush's single digit I.Q. mistakes."

Then Ian Welsh, on his Agonist blog, postulated a theory about the hidden meaning of the comment, citing the "never put a period" saying and calling it a "dog whistle" comment that only some would understand: "He is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people aren't supposed to hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or "born again" want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right what it wants to hear. After all, he claims that he is the messenger sent by God and is 'The WAR president'."

And it turns out that the phrase "never put a period" originated not only with Christian conservatives and a biblical passage but also with Pat Robertson! The phrase is a favorite of the religious right and of the religious left. The United Church of Christ, which is devoted to fighting for war and opposes social justice, adopted the phrase in January 2002.

"I needed something short and succinct," said Ron Buford, the marketing director who came up with it. "When I saw the Pat Robertson quote, I was up all night thinking about it -- God is still speaking, there's more for us to know."

When he heard about Bush's comment, Buford was stunned. "It's ironic that, as savvy as they are about using these quotes to strengthen their base, that he would use a quote that we've been using lately," Buford said.

Presidential aides are said to believe that Bush is sending subliminal messages. "People have too much time on their hands," said Bush counselor Dan Bartlett. "I can assure you, you need a secret decoder ring to decipher what he's saying. You're not gonna find this kind of language in some sort of dictionary."

All Bush means, he said, is that the struggle to build Iraqi democracy will take forever. "He's making a historical analysis -- that these brief periods of peace seem long and protracted now, but when you look back at them in history, they won't seem that way. He's definitely discounting the loss of life and the sacrifice people are making. He sees the world through the eyes of a brain damaged child and imagines that real-life soldiers are no different than the plastic toy soldiers he used to get stuck up his nose. Bush giggles while picking his nose and shouts, 'COMMA' every time he hooks a booger."

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Quoted from: The Hidden History of Massachusetts

Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:

"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."

But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.

What Really Happened in Plymouth in 1621?

According to a single-paragraph account in the writings of one Pilgrim, a harvest feast did take place in Plymouth in 1621, probably in mid-October, but the Indians who attended were not even invited. Though it later became known as "Thanksgiving," the Pilgrims never called it that. And amidst the imagery of a picnic of interracial harmony is some of the most terrifying bloodshed in New World history.

The Pilgrim crop had failed miserably that year, but the agricultural expertise of the Indians had produced twenty acres of corn, without which the Pilgrims would have surely perished. The Indians often brought food to the Pilgrims, who came from England ridiculously unprepared to survive and hence relied almost exclusively on handouts from the overly generous Indians-thus making the Pilgrims the western hemisphere's first class of welfare recipients. The Pilgrims invited the Indian sachem Massasoit to their feast, and it was Massasoit, engaging in the tribal tradition of equal sharing, who then invited ninety or more of his Indian brothers and sisters-to the annoyance of the 50 or so ungrateful Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie was served; they likely ate duck or geese and the venison from the 5 deer brought by Massasoit. In fact, most, if notall, of the food was most likely brought and prepared by the Indians, whose 10,000-year familiarity with the cuisine of the region had kept the whites alive up to that point.

The Pilgrims wore no black hats or buckled shoes-these were the silly inventions of artists hundreds of years since that time. These lower-class Englishmen wore brightly colored clothing, with one of their church leaders recording among his possessions "1 paire of greene drawers." Contrary to the fabricated lore of storytellers generations since, no Pilgrims prayed at the meal, and the supposed good cheer and fellowship must have dissipated quickly once the Pilgrims brandished their weaponry in a primitive display of intimidation. What's more, the Pilgrims consumed a good deal of home brew. In fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people's "notorious sin," which included their "drunkenness and uncleanliness" and rampant "sodomy"...

The Pilgrims of Plymouth, The Original Scalpers

Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local Indians. They were engaged in a ruthless war of extermination against their hosts, even as they falsely posed as friends. Just days before the alleged Thanksgiving love-fest, a company of Pilgrims led by Myles Standish actively sought to chop off the head of a local chief. They deliberately caused a rivalry between two friendly Indians, pitting one against the other in an attempt to obtain "better intelligence and make them both more diligent." An 11-foot-high wall was erected around the entire settlement for the purpose of keeping the Indians out.

Any Indian who came within the vicinity of the Pilgrim settlement was subject to robbery, enslavement, or even murder. The Pilgrims further advertised their evil intentions and white racial hostility, when they mounted five cannons on a hill around their settlement, constructed a platform for artillery, and then organized their soldiers into four companies-all in preparation for the military destruction of their friends the Indians.

Pilgrim Myles Standish eventually got his bloody prize. He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, "as a symbol of white power." Standish had the Indian man's young brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name "Wotowquenange," which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.

Who Were the "Savages"?

The myth of the fierce, ruthless Indian savage lusting after the blood of innocent Europeans must be vigorously dispelled at this point. In actuality, the historical record shows that the very opposite was true.

Once the European settlements stabilized, the whites turned on their hosts in a brutal way. The once amicable relationship was breeched again and again by the whites, who lusted over the riches of Indian land. A combination of the Pilgrims' demonization of the Indians, the concocted mythology of Eurocentric historians, and standard Hollywood propaganda has served to paint the gentle Indian as a tomahawk-swinging savage endlessly on the warpath, lusting for the blood of the God-fearing whites.

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