CAMPBELL COUNTY CONSTITUTION-HATING FUCKHEADEDNESS

You'd think that when a school system displays such mind-numbing incompetence with such consistency as the Campbell County Schools have that sooner or later somebody would have the courage to tell the offending school officials, "Hey you fucking clods, here's the way it wafts."

Well, that's what we're about to do. Again. (Sigh.)

We know several right-wing school systems in Northern Kentucky were among the first in the nation to require drug tests of student athletes, but did you know Campbell County High School is the ONLY high school in the area that requires drug tests of all athletes AND all other extracurricular members AND all students who drive to school?

This is clearly unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. And we all know how important the Bill of Rights is in Campbell County (snicker), or else those bullies at Cline wouldn't have cited the First Amendment to protect their "right" to follow their schoolmates around and harass them.

The Fourth Amendment protects against - aw, fuck it. You know this is a lost cause, because we're idiots who think the Constitution still exists.

Seriously now. In every school system where they've been tried, drug tests haven't been effective in curbing drug use. This is a fact confirmed by a University of Michigan study. Drug tests also build deep mistrust between students and teachers. Furthermore, the proper use of prescription drugs often shows up as a false positive reading, so the tests aren't even accurate!

People have got to be out of their minds not to sue, but the Supreme Court is nuttier for approving drug tests by claiming the court's made-up "role model effect" takes priority over constitutional law. Talk about legislating from the bench! This right there is grounds to impeach Supreme Court Justices. The Supremes can't put personal opinion ahead of the law, but this time they did.

Only 5% of American school districts use forced drug testing, so Campbell County just had to be among that 5%, didn't it? Typical, considering how much that school system sucked in the '80s.

As a Cline alumnus, I'm allowed to say that. And yes, that's an Allowed Cloud.

Meanwhile, the Campbell County Schools' year-round calendar is proving to be such a big failure (surprise, surprise) that complaints by parents have prompted the schools to start a week later next year. The school system still hasn't caught on to the obvious solution, which is to get rid of year-round school altogether.

Oh, only 4% of school systems in them U.S. of A. States have year-round school. Multiply 5% by 4%, and only 1 in 500 school systems are as fucked up as Campbell County. Of course, that doesn't account for the fact that the schools with drug testing tend to be the same ones with year-round school.

For those of you now becoming acquainted with our work or with the Campbell County Schools, things really are THAT bad. When the school system imposed the right-wing idea of year-round school despite all the public opposition to it, the schools had already amassed a reputation of at least 30 years of blunders so incredible you'd think they were episodes of a comedic drama. If only it wasn't such a serious matter. (We know the public schools that comprise the Campbell County Schools aren't nearly as bad as some private schools like Bro$$art, but then again, it would take effort to be that bad.)

The 20th anniversary of My Very First Suspension - the one that followed the infamous mob assault at Cline - just passed us by. Back then we thought the school system couldn't get much worse. We were wrong.

WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE

Pat Sajak is a right-wing crackpot!

Recently the "Wheel Of Fortune" game show host wrote some article that made himself sound like a total wingnut. On and on Sajak rants and raves, attacking liberals for liking the First Amendment. Of course he throws in some dig about "misinterpreting" the part about freedom of religion, since he apparently doesn't believe in separation of church and state, but he also misstates the Left's views on other amendments, such as the Ninth and Tenth.

The last two amendments in the Bill of Rights deal briefly with the rights of states and the people versus federal power. It is not the Left but the Right that has run roughshod over these rights. For instance, the Bosh regime supports passing a misnamed "right-to-work" law at the federal level. "Right-to-work" laws are union-busting. That's what they are. But Dumbya supports overriding the rights of states like Kentucky that lack such a law.

Right-wing federal judges legislated from the bench when they dictated that cities in California could not pass laws against excessive bank fees.

And it's not just the economic issues that we like so much where conservatives support abusing the federal muscle. It's also issues of personal autonomy. For example, Oregon voters approved a death with dignity referendum a decade ago, but conservative federal courts tossed that. Right-wing federal judges also overruled Alaska's civil rights law that protected tenants from discrimination based on marital status, because - we're not making this up, people - they said it violated landlords' True Free Speach Now (tm).

The Ninth Amendment talks about how the Constitution mentioning some rights can't be construed to deny other rights that aren't specifically mentioned. In recent years, however, it's always been the conservatives who have tried to do just that, especially regarding economic rights (in other words, the rights they'll never have to worry about needing, because they've gone through life having everything handed to them on a silver platter). Furthermore, it seems that not only do they think the right to privacy doesn't exist (even though legal scholars agree this is covered in other amendments), but they think its supposed nonexistence means no state can create a right to privacy.

We can't even count all the virtually identical letters to local newspapers we saw in the mid-'90s that all spewed the same conservative bullshit du jour: that the government can't provide assistance to the needy and disabled because the Constitution doesn't specifically mandate it (even though it doesn't forbid it either).

Sajak goes on to suggest that since the Second Amendment is too often viewed "through 21st Century eyes", then the First Amendment should perhaps be curtailed to combat pornography.

Oh, now that's rich. Sajak was just talking about the Tenth Amendment, which gives rights to states and the people - yet he wants the government to snoop at what people read?

(He also misstates the liberal view of the Second Amendment by claiming liberals "disregard" it. That - as far as our own views are concerned - is false.)

Here's more damning evidence of Pat Sajak's extremism: He's also an external director of Regnery, a right-wing book publishing firm that in recent years has become known for dealing almost exclusively in recycled John Birch Society-like propaganda rewritten to reflect more recent events, using that same paranoid style.

You'd think a nationally famous TV celebrity wouldn't make such an ass of themselves. Imagine if you can what the reaction would have been if some other game show host had written an article expressing left-wing views. The Republican National Committee would probably put together a letter-writing campaign to hound all of the show's affiliates until they cancel the show.

We remember reading a book whose author insisted that Dan Quayle looked like Pat Sajak. Thanks to Sajak's goofy opinions, we'd be inclined to think Sajak and ol' Meet Me At DQ just might be the same person, if we didn't know any better.

"INTELLIGENCE REFORM" A DOUBLE MISNOMER

"Intelligence reform".

You'd think something called "intelligence reform" would at least have a little bit of reform and a little bit of intelligence. But the bill that sailed through the Republican Congress towards Bosh's desk doesn't have much of either.

The Senate approved this sham 89 to 2, believe it or not. While some of the bill's provisions would work well as separate legislation, these things are completely undercut by provisions that range from the probably unenforceable to the highly suspect to the truly fascist.

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of this law is its attempt to establish a mandatory national ID card by requiring minimum standards governing what states must put on driver's licenses and IDs. States would be required to make licenses and IDs "machine readable". That's right, "machine readable". This means a computer chip, barcode, or magnetic strip.

Wasn't it only about 8 years ago when people were ready to march in the streets because ONE state did this? It's truly breathtaking that the right to privacy could be dashed so spectacularly in only a few short years without people noticing.

This is an example of the government doing the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE of what it should do. What Congress should do is say the states CAN'T have "machine readable" IDs. Instead they say the states MUST.

Like when the book burners in Congress mandated censorware in libraries (instead of prohibiting it), it's as if Congress and the Bosh regime are intentionally trying to do the wrong thing. Not like this wasn't painfully obvious already.

The law also requires states to make photos on IDs digital so they can more easily be stored in linked databases.

Yep, it sounds like the conservatives really are the champions of state autonomy they claim to be, har-de-har-har.

If some state decides to get gutsy and not comply with the new federal power grab, the ruling regime has a solution for that. Anywhere federal agencies demand an ID, such as airports, IDs that don't meet the new rules won't be honored.

An ACLU director calls it a "garbage-in, garbage-out situation." While the supposed goal of the new law is to prevent terrorists from getting phony IDs, you know it won't work, because any terrorist could just get a fake birth certificate and Social Security papers to get an ID.

Even more shocking is that the House version would have gone even further by dictating to the states who would be allowed to have a license or ID. Extremists in the House plan to introduce a bill to do this after the new, more right-wing Congress is sworn in.

The recently passed law will also expand wiretapping authority to spy on individuals.

None of this of course is surprising. Nowadays, under the Patriot Act, if you buy a car - and good luck with that, considering what the economy is like - you have to sign a form for your name to be checked against a U.S. Treasury list.

When Kentucky added a barcode to its licenses we were proud to burn part of our license that had the barcode and publish a picture of the hilarious results. (The barcode replaced most of the organ donor information, because the barcode was just SOOOOO important. This shows where the priorities of those who support this shit lay.) If you want some laughs, and if you don't want encoded information on your ID, allow a beautiful fork of fire to sip away a corner of your ID and reduce it to a lump of melted plastic.

Save me from tomorrow. I don't want to sail with this ship of fools.

WHAT CONSERVATIVES CALL FAMILY VALUES

While right-wing blogs funded by think tanks and partisan hacks cajole news outlets and spread lies, we've become avid fans of progressive blogs that counter the forces of ignorance and evil. We've found an interesting tidbit from Iowa posted on some of these blogs, and we'd like to share it with you.

Back before the so-called "election" there was an article about Bosh consorting with some folks from Clive, IA, named Mike and Sharla Hintz. Mike Hintz was a First Assembly of God youth pastor. At this lovefest Disgeorge told his followers that the Hintzes benefited from his tax plan, and Mike Hintz praised the hated dictator, saying he shared his values. "Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President [sic] Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes," Hintz incoherently thundered.

Just a few days ago, there was a story from an Iowa television station about a youth pastor being charged with sexual exploitation of a child. Authorities say he initiated an illicit affair with a teenage member of his church youth group earlier this year.

Guess what this pastor's name is?

That's right. Mike Hintz. Yes, the same Mike Hintz.

More proof of how conservatives sermonize about morals and family values, but they can't even get their own lives in order.

LAST CHRISTMAS...WE GAVE YOU A FART... (A FLATULENT FLASHBACK)

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas, so why not let us regale you with the story of the most hilarious bout of flatulence we've ever detected?

Last year on Christmas Day we had a big gathering at my mom's house. I got a meal that day. Meals have become a rarity in recent years. Most of you notice you might get a meal once every couple weeks or so. Meals used to be pretty common, like maybe a couple of 'em each day. But there's a lot of things that used to be. I used to be 18 years old. There used to be Democrats in Congress. There used to be orange-peach-mango juice sold at the grocery. Gas used to be 82 cents a gallon. See? Nothing lasts forever.

Nothing lasts forever, that is, except the hilarity of flatulence.

After supper last Christmas, we were all crowded around the ol' boob toob watchin' stale holiday specials, when a pungent odor wafted through the living room.

The scent was unmistakable. Someone had ripped a biffer!

And this wasn't just an ordinary bunker blast. This was a certain kind of fart - a type that was much stronger and smelled more of rotten eggs. I don't remember eggs being served at din-din, but there must have been some item that included eggs. Not rotten ones, of course. The eggs must have begun to rot after consumption, while digestive juices were absorbing the foodstuff. The parts of the eggs the body could not use were expelled as gases.

This is the stuff they never teach you at school. At school they just say, "You eat, you live. You don't eat, you die." They never explain WHY. They just give you a faded purple worksheet and expect you to figure it out for yourself.

I knew I wasn't the only one who smelled the funky aroma, because it was so strong. Often at family gatherings, folks will set their sights too high by expecting an environment of total refinement, free of slovenly behavior. So when a bunkeroo starts waftin', they often let out a series of annoyed gasps and stare at the most likely suspect. Or, without saying a word, they grab a can of air freshener and spray it about the room.

But not me. Instead I laugh.

This time, I started snickering as I lifted my shirt over my face. "Did somebody cut one?" I asked - although it was already perfectly clear that someone had.

Only then did anyone else seem to notice. "Yeah, I know! It STINKS in here!" a family member said.

"It smells like someone has to GO!" I chortled.

Now, you knew this was coming: Cries of accusation against various people who were present sprang up. But nobody admitted committing this grave human rights violation.

The silent but deadly trouser sneezes continued for the rest of the evening - each one more uproarious than the one before it. They all reeked to high hell, and my laughter couldn't be contained. You had to be there to appreciate it.

Once a suspect was standing next to an accuser when the fragrance of a bunker blast began to float through the air. "Phew!" the accuser said. "Get away from me!" (Somebody really got in the Christmas spirit!) It was as if the odor was going to follow the accused instead of staying right there.

I've smelled individual farts that were stronger, both before and since this event. But not very often. Maybe once every 6 months or so you'll catch a whiff of a toot that comes close to being as fetid as the ones I smelled last Christmas. But never have I witnessed a flatulence event that - in total - was as spectacular as this one was. It went on like this for HOURS!

In most ways, America's best days seem to have long since passed. But if flatulence was a leading economic indicator, you'd think things were only getting better!

MILITARY DICTATORSHIP COMES TO LIFE IN FALLUJAH

The city of Fallujah in Iraq has become a rigid police state during Bush's illegal war.

Residents have been shocked to find they aren't living under the democracy they had been promised but are instead ruled at gunpoint to a degree not seen even before the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

The people of Fallujah are being rounded up in "citizen processing centers" and undergoing forced DNA tests and retina scans so the occupiers can add them to a database. They are required to wear badges displaying their street addresses at all times. The occupiers have banned cars, and they've imposed a rigid curfew, harassed residents, and refused to allow parents into the city to rescue their children who were trapped inside their homes. Aid workers have been ordered to leave town.

The occupying forces also plan to draft all adult males in Fallujah into forced labor in military jobs.

American military commanders say Iraq's U.S.-installed interim dictatorship created these rules. Both the interim Iraqi government and the Bush regime have proven they're not serious about democracy or political stability. But you knew that.

The idea that Iraq has become a democracy is a delusion. Things are worse now than before, and there's no sign things will improve. It's not like we didn't see it coming since the war began.

The fact that it's a war is no excuse to impose a police state on an unwilling people. This is especially true if you're going around telling them it's a democracy, and if this police state gives them even less freedom than what they had before. Human rights are supposed to be universal - something people are born with and can't be taken away by an occupying force.

SHOES GET PEED ON AT VALUE CITY

The verbs "get" and "are" are two different things. If the header of this article was "Shoes Are Peed On At Value City", it would be technically incorrect, because that implies a constant condition rather than a one-time act. The implication would be that Value City regularly sells footwear that has been urinated on.

Come to think of it, even if we replace "are" with "get", the meaning is still ambiguous. We could add the adverb "once", but that would be too verbose, and then you'd already know enough about the event that you wouldn't read further. Oh well. Tough. Value City is fun to ridicule, so let's enjoy this golden (ahem) opportunity.

Recently the Value City store in Latonia was the site of a hilarious act of mischief. Cops say a 36-year-old man walked into the store and pissed on over $1,000 worth of shoes on a display rack - in clear view of other shoppers and employees. The customer was caught on video "urinating on the shoes in a manner as to urinate on as many shoes as he could", in the words of the police report. Some 31 pairs of shoes were (keek!) ruined. Some pairs were valued at as much as $54.99.

After becoming pee-soaked, the shoes had to be destroyed. It's unclear what method the store employed to destroy them. Let's hope this method was damn funny - such as being fed to pee bats in a secret pee cave.

We feel guilty about laughing at this event. Kind of like when the brand new "Sesame Street" flashlight got put in the toilet in high school. Or when my 8th grade science teacher's prized brass mass collection was ruined. But this guilt is part of what makes us at The Last Word human.

Work goes into making these things that got destroyed. It's a shame to make things and have them go to waste before anyone has a chance to use them or before they have reached the end of their useful life. Chalk this up as a political act, because we're assigning it a political meaning.

The political meaning is that it's a long-overdue comeuppance against the system. When I graduated from 8th grade at St. Joe's in Cold Spring, my parents dragged me to this Value City to buy dress shoes. I hated it, I hated it, I hated it. I ended up being banned from my own graduation, because I was expelled, but that's not the point. Let this be a chance to expose the overall tyranny of St. Joe's once again.

What a bunch of right-wing tyrants that school was. Like the time they made me go to school only so I could be warehoused in the office the whole day while the rest of the class went on an outing. What was the point of that?

This is also the same Value City where, when I was a senior at Spit Eye Memorial High School (one of those "secret" schools for "bad" kids), we went on an outing and a younger student got skeeped at because he had previously been caught shoplifting there. Even though he didn't steal anything on this outing, he got punished by the school.

After the recent shoe department vandalism, an assistant police chief was quoted as saying, "Why anyone would pull anything at Value City is beyond me, because, 9 times out of 10, if somebody pulls something at Value City they're going to get caught."

In other words, peeing on shoes at Value City isn't such a grand idea. Looks like you'll have to go to Gallenkamp to do that.

THE WORLD'S RUNNING OUT OF FOOD AND WATER BUT BIG BUSINESS THINKS IT'S YOUR FAULT

Scientists say (you know it's probably gonna be bad news when we start with the phrase "scientists say") that governments are going to have to tell people to eat less because the world's water supply is being burdened by agriculture.

If the world is short on water, let's hope it's also short on governments that would rather - in the name of free markets - starve their own people than fix the water shortages. The World Bank, WTO, and multinational corporations like Monsanto and Bechtel want to privatize all water and sell it to people at inflated prices. We believe the government has a duty to prevent this greed. Capitalism be damned.

Notice how in recent years any problem that comes up is never EVER considered the fault of corporate greed. It's always the fault of little ol' me and you. Truth be told, we wouldn't have water and food problems now if not for the social policies and mismanagement supported by the corporate world.

To hear the media and Big Business tell it, everything is YOUR obligation. Like the government-engineered corn famine they were talking about a while back, when the government basically said, "Hey. Look. There's gonna be a famine, stupid. But we're not gonna do anything about it, because we think everyone's too fat already." It appears they truly believe that last part. And this bullshit is repeated so often by the media that nobody dares to challenge it.

Big corporations, the media, and their government cronies always have their so-called solutions such as genetic engineering which would result in mammoth profits for the corporate world. In 1999 it was revealed that Monsanto wanted to have 100% of soybeans grown in America be genetically modified. This process would have made the soybeans able to withstand spraying with herbicides made by - you guessed it! - Monsanto.

In addition, crops that are modified to have pesticides built in ruin the effectiveness of these pesticides because bugs acquire a resistance to them - but this practice reaps huge profits for the chemical industry.

Unlike most other countries, America doesn't require these frankenfoods to be labeled.

Furthermore, genetically engineered crops have per acre yields 10% lower than crops that aren't tampered with. If you want to help solve world hunger, maybe we should start by putting a halt to genetic engineering.

Monsanto is also quite hostile to dissent. Last year, protesters gathered in St. Louis to demonstrate peacefully against Monsanto and the World Agricultural Forum. This included a calm meeting at the Regional Chamber and Growth Association to discuss how some new biotech processes were destroying family farms and hurting consumers in the long run. When the activists left the meeting, they only made it about a mile when the police pulled them over, searched their van without a warrant, and jailed one of them for possessing over-the-counter vitamins. Because she was jailed for 10 hours, she missed 3 speeches she was scheduled to deliver.

The same day this happened, another group was arrested for riding bicycles without a license - even though no such offense exists in St. Louis or in the state of Missouri. They were detained 6 to 7 hours. Phone directories and itineraries carried by the protesters were stolen by the cops.

On the very same day as all this shit, the cops conducted an illegal raid of a building where many dissidents lived. One of the residents said, "Do you have a warrant? I don't give you permission to enter my house."

One of the officers replied, "We don't need a warrant. This building is condemned." They even brang along a city housing inspector with a bogus condemnation notice.

And people expect us to fucking apologize EVERY FUCKING TIME we have to expose police misconduct like this.

Well, the cops DO need a warrant. The Fourth Amendment says so. Don't like it? Move to Singapore where rights don't exist.

Then some of the people who lived in the building were arrested and charged with occupying a condemned building, even though the bogus notice didn't even arrive until the police brang it. They were jailed for 15 to 20 hours.

This sounds like something Boss Hogg and Rosco would pull, doesn't it?

The residents returned to their building to find the cops had completely ransacked it and stolen just about everything in it. The police later returned bicycles belonging to them, but the tires were slashed, and therefore the bikes could not be used. When you try riding on empty tires, strange things happen. We tried doing that a couple years back (on the same day we destroyed a pay phone in Latonia because it stole our money and kept playing a robot voice that said "error 60") and it didn't get us more than a mile.

There should never be a shortage of water. Water is consumed, but it never leaves the planet's atmosphere, even if it takes a different form. Besides that, you know the very wealthy will never have to worry about not having enough food and water, because they'll still be able to buy as much as they need.

Sounds like we - the peasants - shouldn't have to starve ourselves. What should be done? Clearly, the free market doesn't work. If it did, America wouldn't have such a yawning gap between the rich and poor. Some waste water can be used for irrigation - not for drinking though. And toilet water shouldn't be used. We seem to recall that we once did a story about some town that planned to hook the output from the sewer system up to the public water supply, and that's not what we want. Using other waste water for irrigation, however, is realistic.

Much water in canals is lost to evaporation, but this can be prevented by covering the canals with covers that drain rain into the canals.

Get serious about those who waste water. When I worked as a cartographic field technician, I saw a lot of mansions with huge lawns that required a gigantic sprinkler. About half the area covered by the sprinkler was over the street, so the water was wasted by landing on pavement or in people's cars. Nothing but grass was growing on the lawn, so the lawn wasn't producing anything edible.

Is it too much to ask to discourage this type of thing? Yeah, we know all the excuses: The free market dictates some people will have more than others, the government can't "take" property by saying how it can be used, and blah blah blah. But instead of punishing people outright for large, unproductive lawns, we'd prefer other options, like changing the tax code to reward households that produce food.

Efforts to educate people in America and around the world about effectively taking charge of things have been hampered again and again by those who think they know better. This must stop.

Don't let capitalism starve you.

TYRANNY TRAUMA

In the immortal words of Tom Petty, I can't decide which is worse:

1) The pretense by many progressives that it took until during Bosh's first term for America to become a right-wing police state, when it clearly already was by 1996.

2) The suggestion by media talking heads that those who take umbrage at the result of the recent "election" are suffering from some newly discovered disease or mental disorder.

3) Ridicule of this apparent disease by right-wing asshats of the worst order.

Come on, folks. Do you really think we have such a short memory that we don't remember how pissed to high hell people were following many a so-called "election" over the past couple of decades?

We dissenters had to live under Reagan for 8 years, but at least most of us survived it. In Congress and in statehouses all over America, the opposition against the Reagan regime was strong and productive. Much more so than today, most of the mainstream news media thought of itself as having a duty to provide objective information and give fair treatment to both sides of an issue. The media had some conservative bias, but it wasn't nearly as widespread then, and media ownership was less concentrated, so we had many more choices where to get our news.

At the time, however, conservatives were getting a foot in the door for later political gains. Worse than this, ideologues began to dominate their movement, and conservatism became less pragmatic. What we call the New Right was conservative for the sake of being conservative. This was their reaction to the more liberal policies of the '60s and '70s.

We're convinced the new breed of conservatives was full of shit and they knew it. Conservatism had been humiliated only a few years earlier, so - like sore losers - they were now going to pursue their ideology with unprecedented fervor. The New Right survives solely by shouting down the opposition. That's all they have, and they know it. Think how incredibly laughable they'd look if they didn't have that.

We saw the New Right in action in 1988, because we had the misfortune of being a part of their poisoned social environment at the time. Believe us when we say it: We were as traumatized by the "election" then as many other dissidents are now. On its own (even without the other circumstances we suffered in the surrounding years), the situation we faced after the 1988 election is a trigger for what is now classed as complex post-traumatic stess disorder, as it was prolonged exposure to totalitarian control. Even if America as a whole wasn't yet truly totalitarian, our situation at the time was. It was totalitarian because we were in a social environment where we were robbed of free will. We were powerless - completely denied a voice in our own surroundings.

We never fully recovered from it, and the problem was compounded following the 1994 "election" and in almost every November since 2000. The treshold of what political events make us mad has increased considerably, because we've now been trained to expect a whole lotta fucking up.

Let us tell you what this has done to us on the activist front. We're regaling you of past mistakes because knowledge is power. If you want to avoid a repeat of these errors, listen close.

For starts, I'm part of the first so-called ADD generation. It's fair to say that at the time The Last Word began I was addicted to prescription pills. From the age of 11 until I was old enough to be allowed to decide otherwise, schools prescribed to me at least 3 different drugs, often in combination with each other. One of them - Cylert (pemoline) - would be discontinued in Canada in 1999 because it causes permanent eye and liver damage and other side effects. Neither me nor my family were told about the side effects when the school first prescribed this poison. Between 1975 and 1996, there were 13 known cases in the U.S. of liver failure caused by pemoline. Yet this toxin has not been pulled in the U.S., because the Bushes are big investors in the pharmaceutical racket.

I think ADD is a spindrome, a disorder made up by drug makers and schools. I'm allowed to say that, because I was diagnosed with this so-called disorder. I plan to mention briefly in my upcoming book how the school system wouldn't call it what it was because it wouldn't have done anything for them or for money-grubbing drug makers.

I'm steamed to no end about being force-fed at least 3 different poisons and seldom being warned of the effects - for a disorder that doesn't even exist!

We also find it interesting that all the privileged exurbanites who go around calling everyone else dopers and support mandatory urine testing are the same ones who support schools force-feeding prescription drugs to our youth. It speaks largely to their seething hatred of individuality that seems to seep through every time they open their mouths.

In college, in the early years of The Last Word, I got splitting headaches, and - because of all the poison that remained in my system - I had to take more than the recommended dosage of over-the-counter pills to remedy them. I think the headaches were aggravated by political events we took very seriously. This and The Last Word were a bad combination.

Sure, my views are the same now as they were then. I haven't softened one bit. But you know people are gonna keep throwing old stuff in my face - purposely misinterpreting my words and accusing me of saying things I didn't say - so let's clear the air. I base even my most controversial ideas on peace, freedom, and equality. My foes deliberately try to make my ideas sound sinister by distorting or even lying about my words.

To be honest, our surroundings before the rise of the Internet were very provincial, and words and concepts don't always mean the same things they did 10 years ago. Putting some of our early articles in a 2004 context is a really cheap trick, especially since our other writings from the same period contradict the points the rightists try to make about our supposed evil.

Choose your words wisely. Don't leave the door open for fascists to misinterpret your words.

We could tire you about how in only 15 months in the mid-'90s America completely crumbled, but I honestly can't recall much of that time frame. I'm sorry. I believe my work was sabotaged. I feel I was taken advantage of. I wrote a lot of great material at the time, but I sincerely don't remember writing some of what is attributed to me, and I'm certain I didn't write it. I plan to go into more detail about this sometime.

This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't lost contact with many of my allies then. The lesson: keep your friends closer than your enemies.

It's painful to recall what happened when we began posting on the Internet. Most of you would have walked away. But we're one in a zillion, and we had to stay and fight. That's all just good and grand and KY 1892, but it was ineffective because we tried to stay above their level. We had to strain our output greatly, and it hurt us.

When arguing with such weirdoes, never waste the facts on them. They're bullies. They know the facts but they don't care. You have to sink below their level if possible. They never expect it. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. If they continue to harass, run for your life and spend your efforts elsewhere.

The growing sadness since Dukakis's defeat has caused some indelible smudges on the otherwise good reputation of The Last Word. We've anguished for years about the lapses of mastery over our own project. We're mortal, and therefore imperfect. But we're progressive populists, so we mustn't stray from certain standards.

You may have suffered political trauma only the past few weeks. Be thankful you haven't been suffering for 16 years because of a toxic social milieu.

Don't be in denial about what American conservatism has become. It abuses, it bullies, it gloats, it pitches shitfits. Call it what it is. Recognizing the problem is an important step in turning the political tide.

Don't try to please the New Right.

Don't follow their lead. Citizenship isn't about conforming to some phony political doctrine.

A tyrannical political climate doesn't have to be traumatic. It can be fun! Know the problem so you can improve the situation and gain satisfaction from each small victory. Humiliate or avoid political bullies. Don't repeat past mistakes. Take comfort in the fact that the more people learn about what's been going on, the more they'll vote against the ruling regime.