BUSH IS MAKING PROVING HE'S A LIAR TOO EASY

For example, here is Dear Leader on March 8, 2003 (downingstreetmemo.com has done superb work on this stuff):

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.”

And that lie of his was told after the Jan 31, 2003 Bush/Blair meeting that was detailed in a document released today, in which

Bush made clear to Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq without the
second United Nation resolution, "or even if international arms inspectors
failed to find unconventional weapons," writes Don Van Natta, Jr. after
examining the memo written about the meeting by Blair's top foreign policy
adviser David Manning. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the
military planning," Manning wrote in the memo. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president, according to Van Natta.

So in January 03 Bush has "penciled in" March 10 as the date to begin the illegal invasion of Iraq, yet states in address two days before on March 8 that he's trying to avoid war. He was in fact doing the exact opposite at the moment he spoke those words on March 8--he was rushing like a madman into an ill-advised, illegal war that has killed or wounded 15,000 + U.S. troops and by his own estimate, at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians.

Unbelievable.

Simply unbelievable.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Americans are taught that our leaders don't do. Oh, leaders of other countries engage in this kind of deceitful treachery, but not our leaders, oh no sir. You see, America is a morally superior democracy, which is what a filthy shithole like Iraq needs to be.

How can anyone with a single iota of common decency or self-respect or respect for the Constitution or faith in the Presidency still support this liar? George W. Bush is the antichrist, if there is such a thing.

Just A Reminder

And here's a scary story about Bush planning the Iraq war 3 months after 9/11, in which Bush reveals why he doesn't care about what havoc his policies have wrought and will wreak:

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

That single quote goes a long way toward summarizing so much that is wrong with the Bush presidency, and indeed the entire neocon/Christofascist Republican worldview. And that worldview is horrific, to say the least.

The most disturbing part, of course is that "we'll be dead". Who is "we"? I'm pretty sure that by "we" he wants us to think he's merely referring to himself, his evil henchmen, Bob Woodward, etc. But what if that's not the "we" he's referring to? What if, by "we", he means the American people? As in, history will not judge his war because there will be no historians (or anyone else, for that matter) to pass judgment after the nuclear holocaust he's going to unleash before the 2008 election.

Will his daughters be dead? Will any grandchildren he may end up having be dead? Do you see what I'm saying? Does he really not care what happens in the future simply because he'll be dead? Is that his "positive vision" for our country?

His answer to Woodward's question is the worst possible answer. It's the absolute wrong answer.

When the wrong answer is the right answer

Yet it's the right answer to the corporatists, to the globalizationists, the hasten-the-Second-Coming fundamentalists. Their attitude is "eat, drink and be merry" for tomorrow "we'll all be dead," in Bush's words. And of course by "eat, drink and be merry" they mean "accumulate wealth above everything else, use up the earth's natural resources, pollute whatever we feel like, enrich ourselves at all costs, be self-righteous and self-aggrandizing, and put profit over people."

In other words, Bush was expressing their creed to perfection--who cares who gets hurt by what we're doing right now because we'll all be dead when the chickens come home to roost (in the form of cuts in or elimination of social services, terrorism, poverty, default on the debt, another great depression, war, famine, pestilence, etc.).

What a great president, though. Wouldn't you just really like to have a beer with ol' G.W.?

AND NOW WE'RE IN YEAR FOUR

Just thinking about the third anniversary of the Iraq war. Weren't we told that the "war on terror" was a "different kind of war?" Why yes we were, by the Commander-in-Chief-of-screwing-things-up, on August 22, 2005:

Like the great struggles of the 20th century, the war on terror demands every element of our national power. Yet this is a different kind of war. Our enemies are not organized into battalions, or commanded by governments. They hide in shadowy networks and retreat after they strike. After September the 11th, 2001, I made a pledge, America will not be -- will not wait to be attacked again. We will go on the offense and we will defend our freedom. (Applause.)

This thought just crossed my mind again recently--if this war is so different, why are we fighting it like every other war we've ever fought?

The Lobby

You've got to at least browse Raimondo's column today. It's a good and informative summary of the so-called "Israel Lobby" and how U.S. fealty to Israel is detrimental to our foreign policy. If you have the time and energy, you might want to read the synopsis from the authors themselves here. Here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out to me, precisely because this is a side of Israel you don't often hear about:

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

Good Night and Good Luck

Finally watched it tonight. Just substitute "terrorism" every time they say "Communism" and it reflects today's media/political climate so perfectly it's palpable.

And here's my latest letter to the editor:

Bush should be impeached


Let's say, just for argument's sake, that the United States had a president that had done all of the following:

1. Held office at the time of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

2. Admitted to a program of spying on American citizens without warrants, in clear violation of U.S. law.

3. Began a war of aggression against a country that had never attacked us, in violation of all international laws and norms.

4. Detained American citizens without charge or representation, in violation of U.S. law.

5. Sanctioned torture of prisoners in violation of international laws and norms.

6. Began his first term in office having lost the popular vote and then been installed by a one-vote difference in the Supreme Court.

7. Created the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

8. Oversaw an increase in poverty every year he was in office.

If we had such a president, any rational person would conclude that that president would need to be impeached and removed because he was a danger to the continued existence of America as a constitutional republic, regardless of his party affiliation, family name or professed belief in God and freedom. As it happens, we do have a president that has done these things, and his name happens to be George W. Bush.

Calling for the impeachment and removal of George W. Bush is not "Bush-bashing" or "hating Bush." It is the proper response to any president - Democrat or Republican - who abuses power, ignores the Constitution and wages unjust war.

Clinton Kirby,

Hattiesburg

INSTEAD OF RAISING THE DEBT CEILING...

...maybe we could undo the tax cuts...

Is this why the Iranian oil bourse won't "break the buck?"

Or is it because the buck is already broken?

Seriously, what will it take for people to realize that things like abortion and homosexuality don't matter for shit, and things like tax-cutting our way into oblivion while simultaneously waging unjust wars do, and then vote accordingly?

We are so fucked...

THE WAY TO FIGHT A "WAR ON TERROR"...

...is to stop waging wars to improve "investor confidence" (see previous post). The way to fight terror, to which Marty Kaplan alluded today, is to stop antagonizing other countries and peoples through subversion of their elections, propping up their oppressors, valuing their resources over their well-being, and so forth.

Here's what Kaplan said:

Realize that the war on terror is also a positive struggle for the world's hearts and minds, not an Oedipal vendetta, and not an excuse to shred the Constitution.

It's simple common sense.

THE NEXT WAR WILL BE FOUGHT TO PRESERVE "INVESTOR CONFIDENCE"...

So the restoration of "investor confidence" is the main objective in dealing with Iran? Mr. Straw seems to be tipping his hand a little more than he probably means to with this statement...

'The result of Iran putting itself beyond the pale in the international community has been a serious damage to investor confidence,' he said.
'The Iranian stock exchange, which is actually quite busy normally, has declined significantly.'
'There's been a flight of capital out of the country and even more worrying for the regime, the brightest and the best of Iranians continue to leave the country in large numbers.'

But it's good that he did, because it exposes the true face of economic imperialism...I haven't read the full text of his remarks, so I'm not exactly sure which investors are losing confidence, but I assume he means Western investors. And God knows that Western investors should not have their confidence shaken--it is their God-given right to be able to maximize profit at the expense of all else, especially at the expense of the rights of non-Westerners.

This is what's wrong with the world, friends--the profit motive uber alles.

IMPEACH THE LYING CORPORATE GREEDHEADS

Finally getting to watch the Harper's forum on "Is There A Case For Impeachment?" on C-Span 2. It's very inspiring--Elizabeth Holtzman pointed out that the move for impeachment has to come from the public, like it did in the case of Nixon...

The Congress doesn't want to deal with impeachment, so they have to be forced into it...

So let's force them, shall we? We should ask ourselves every day, "what am I doing to help cause the impeachment of George W. Bush?" And forget the fact that it's a guy named "George W. Bush." If the President's name was "Franklin Roosevelt" and the person that bore that name had done these things:

1. Presided over the worst terrorist attack in American history
2. As a result of that attack, rammed through a law that removed civil liberties of American citizens
3. Began a program of spying on American citizens without warrants in clear violation of U.S. law
4. Made a case for war against a country that never attacked us by distorting, exaggerating, and outright lying about that country
5. Began a war of aggression against a country that had never attacked us, in violation of all international laws and norms
6. Detained American citizens without charge or representation, in contravention of U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution
7. Tortured prisoners in contravention of international laws and norms
8. Oversaw the worst labor market since the Great Depression
9. Began his first term in office having lost the popular vote and being installed by a one-vote difference in the Supreme Court
10. Created the biggest deficit in the history of the country
11. Repeatedly gave tax cuts to the wealthy while poverty has increased every year he's been in office

And that's just of the top of my fucking head...write letters to the editor, organize marches, play benefit concerts, hold signs up in noonday traffic, write your representatives, write books, make speeches, organize forums, put signs in your yard, talk to your friends, neighbors, fellow church members, wear T-shirts, get bumper stickers...Let's do this!!!

And so forth and so on...

PLANNED PARENTHOOD VS. DROPOUTS (and a letter)

There is but one Planned Parenthood office in the entire state of Mississippi, and it's right across the highway from my neighborhood. Apparently, post-Katrina, their caseload has doubled...

But you know those fun-lovin' Republicans--screw what the needs of women are...family planning is for witches, and all that...

And could this be the reason why Mississippi falls for this fascist crap? And might there be fewer dropouts if Planned Parenthood had an office in every county? Y'know, so teenage mothers don't drop out of school to take care of children that they shouldn't have in the first place?

And a letter to the editor of mine appeared in the Hattiesburg American today...here's a representative quote:

This just goes to show that those of us who oppose the war are not crazy, and we're not alone. In fact, we're in the right and we're in the majority. As of this writing, only 34 percent of the country approve of the job Bush is doing, and only 30 percent approve of his immoral, unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even 72 percent of our troops say we should leave Iraq within a year.

GLAD I'M A PEPSI MAN...

Today I saw two things I never thought I'd see in Republican-occupied Hattiesburg, the antiwar protest I mentioned below, and this sticker on a Coke machine on the USM campus.














The smaller print says "For crimes in Colombia and India www.cokejustice.org"...

THE FIRST WEDNESDAY OF EVERY MONTH...

...from noon til 1 these peace activists display signs at the corner of Hardy St. and Hwy. 49...

I talked to this woman, who is from Jackson.














She told me a New Orleans evacuee was with them that had a sign saying "Make Levees, Not War." I didn't get their names.

Then I talked to William, a former Army medic (81-85) who now does organic farming--blueberries and pecans--on 18 acres in Magee.















He was there with his wife Lynn, who worked the other side of the street.















I have never seen a protest even this small in Hattiesburg. That's not to say there haven't been others, perhaps I just didn't see them. But they said they've been coming to that corner every month since September--right on!

I asked William about the reaction (and he said the first amendment was the only permit he needed and he had talked to a Hattiesburg city official who told him no permits were needed anyway) from drivers and he said that a lot of them "get it half right"--they only hold up their middle finger when the peace sign takes two fingers...

Sorry about the quality of the pictures...It was pretty bright outside and my cell phone camera was having a hard time with the light...but you get the idea..

Let's make plans to be there with them a month from now...or even more often, if possible...

KATRINA, WHAT HAST THOU WROUGHT?

That's the question Dubai Bush is probably asking himself as he fans himself in the Indian heat. The 34% approval president tried, days after Katrina, to deflect some of the criticism of the federal government with his patented "aw shucks" fake-Texan routine by saying "Gee whiz, who'da thunk the levees would be breached..." And now the AP is actually putting in work that puts the lie to such a statement...

How unpopular does this Bush have to get before the Republicans will take up the Conyers Call and drive him out of office? Does he have to get down to Dick Cheney levels? Sheesh...

GOODBYE CIVIL LIBERTIES...

...been nice having you. The Patriot Act will be renewed shortly despite the valiant efforts of our hero Russ Feingold. And then my home state of Mississippi is working toward following South Dakota's miserable lead in outlawing abortion in ALL cases except for when the life of the mother is in danger.

Life sure is grand here in the land of the restricted and the home of the cowardly...are we gonna let this bullshit go on?

BELIEVING BAD THINGS VS. BELIEVING GOOD THINGS

In my recent research into the 9/11 Truth movement, I stopped and asked myself a question–do I buy into this simply because I want to believe bad things about Bush and Republicans? Will I believe anything about them as long as it casts them in a negative light? Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and their hordes of adherents constantly suggest as much. In online forums and letters to the editor, “left-wing wackos” are accused of simply “hating Bush” and being “blind” to the truth.

My own father suggests that by reading liberal blogs and anti-Bush books and shunning their opposites, I am therefore unable to get at the truth because I’m only listening to one side of the story.

And I answered that question to myself with another question–will Bush supporters believe anything about Bush and Republicans as long as it casts them in a positive light?

After all, in the same online forums and letters to the editor, Bush supporters say they support him “100 percent” and that Bush is a good Christian man and we should follow him merely because he says he prays every day.

But no, I bought the official story about 9/11 until I saw “Loose Change.” The facts make me believe bad things about Bush and Republicans, not my ideology.

If anything, a liberal/progressive ideology would tend to make one more forgiving and more understanding and tolerant of Bush and Republicans. And I adhere to a liberal and progressive way of thinking, but the facts lead me negative conclusions about Bush and Republicans.

THE MOST IMPORTANT AND SUCCESSFUL BUSH POLICY...

...is unmitigated chutzpah. Check out Bush’s defense today of the Dubai Ports World deal:

"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a great British company," Bush said.
"I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world 'we'll treat you fairly.'"

WTF? Is that what we’re saying to Iran? To Venezuela? Would anyone say that’s what we’ve said to Iraq? Although Bush is saying that “we’ll treat you fairly” is what he’s saying “now” as opposed to just before he said it. And that “now” is now over, so I guess that justifies the way we’ll continue to treat other countries.

Such is the logic here in Bushland...We know that Bush and Co. frequently and purposely misuse the meaning of words. So is the “now” qualifier in his statement the operative word or is he trying to do to the word “fairly” what he’s done to the word “reform?”

NO WIRETAPPING OF AMERICANS. PERIOD.

A reader writes in to Altercation and has this to say:

Rove wants to frame Bush's warrantless wire-tapping as though the issue were whether or not the U.S. government can spy on terrorists. This is ridiculous. Of course we can and should spy on terrorists. Who in their right mind would oppose that? The real issue is a much bigger one: Do we want a president or do we want a king? If we want a president, then he must be subject to constraints as the Founders envisioned. He must come under oversight. He must be checked and balanced. Once we lift these constraints, he can do whatever he wants and becomes a king.

Of course, he’s right. And the counter-argument might go something like this–there will always be people, i.e. “terrorists” that want to harm Americans, so the President should have whatever authority is necessary to stop such people.

OK, not a terrible counter-argument, but here’s the counter-argument to that–America needs to ask itself why people would want to harm it and once it knows the answer (which, if it isn’t already painfully obvious, can be found be simply asking or listening to those who want to harm us), take steps to stop doing the things that aggrieve these people, i.e., stop overthrowing governments, invading countries without provocation, etc.

Because you get what you deserve. Oh horror–am I suggesting that America “asks for” terrorism? In a word, yes. It’s very clear why “terrorists” want to harm us–we keep our boot on the neck of large parts of the world to feed our military-industrial complex. And we’ve got to stop doing that.

Yes, all the defense contractors and oil companies will lose money if we stop doing that. But if we don’t stop meddling around the world, we soon won’t even have what sets our country apart (in theory, anyway) from all the others–our civil liberties.

In other words, we have a choice–keep our military-industrial complex or our civil liberties. Which do we want to keep more?

The Crux of The Biscuit

Here's the crux of the biscuit: We wouldn't need warrantless wiretapping if we weren't provoking the world into wanting to do us harm. Y'see what I'm saying? So rather than allow Bush to break the law and have so much power that he's more king than president, we need to go about getting people to like us more. Then there would be no "war on terror" and hence no "need" for domestic spying.

And a good way to do that is to stop starting wars of aggression. And torturing prisoners. And destabilizing democratic governments. It's really very simple. To have a friend (or at least avoid having enemies), you gotta be one. No one likes a bully and the U.S. is being and has been a bully for quite a while.

See, the people we call "terrorists" are fighting their own war on terror--against us. "Terrorism" is nothing more than a point of view difference: to us, "they" are terrorists and to them, we are. So our "war on terror" fuels their "war on terror" and it goes on and on with no end.

Why can't we be the bigger country and say, you know what? We ain't gonna study war no more. We're gonna do what Bill Hicks said: Love all the people. In his cool book that bears that title, he imagined a better scenario for America:

"The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns,
close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.
Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.
Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. [p. 135]"

IRAQ=BAD, 9/11=GOOD?

So let me get this straight. Regarding countries (i.e., Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) that spawned or aided (or both) the so-called 9/11 hijackers, we not only don’t invade them, we approve of them controlling port security in 6 major American cities. Regarding countries that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 (i.e., Iraq, Iran), we invade and/or rattle sabers at them.

Does that make a ball of shit’s worth of sense?

Frankly, this state of affairs just gives more ammunition to the so-called 9/11 conspiracy theorists (9/11, by the way, DID involve conspiracy–it’s just that the Bushies want you to believe it was a conspiracy among Middle Easterners rather than among neocons). I mean, 15 of the 19 purported hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and to this day, when Saudi Arabia says jump, we ask how high. And as Paul O’Neill has told us, Iraq was on the Bush agenda from their first Cabinet meeting.

So if you buy the idea that 9/11 wasn’t perpetrated by Middle Eastern terrorists at all, this UAE port security deal makes perfect sense. What I mean to say is, Saudi Arabia and the UAE don’t get attacked or invaded by us because the Bushies know that Middle Eastern terrorists really didn’t pull off 9/11. And Iraq does because that’s the country the neocons have been wanting to knock off since Gulf War I.

And people ask what could possibly be going on behind the scenes, what sort of tit-for-tat arrangement has been work out between the Bushies and the UAE? Obviously I have no idea, but this deal makes sense as hush money for not revealing details of 9/11 and/or other terror plots.

THE NEXT BEST REASON TO END THE WAR...

Besides bringing the troops home so that they can stop killing and being killed, the next best reason to end the war in Iraq is so that Bushistas will no longer be able to justify everything bad they want to do (domestic spying, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, contract cronyism, etc.) as being necessary because we are "in a time of war."

Those five words or some variation thereof are like a magic spell for Republicans...and those who nuzzle their taints. We must break the spell!!

GREAT QUOTE

I'm reading this book about the media and the war and was struck by this quote:

"Given the conformism and obedience of the media during this crucial period, when the basis for U.S. aggression was firmly and irrevocably laid, it is small wonder that public concern was so slight, and that opposition was so negligible as to be entirely without significance. Only the most ardent researcher could have developed a moderately clear understanding of what was taking place...we see very clearly the consequences of mindless media obedience in a state with enormous resources of violence. [pp. 192-93]"

Unfortunately, this is not a recent book (but with a new introduction) and not about a recent war. The quote is from "Manufacturing Consent" by Herman and Chomsky, first published in 1988, and the above quote comes from an examination of the media record on Vietnam.

Nice to see history repeating itself...

WAVELAND PARADE

Rockzilla, the cover band I play in (that's one of many names we go by), has been playing in the Krewe of Nereids (NAIR-eeds) parade for 5 or 6 years now. We didn't know if they'd have the parade this year, given the devastation down there, but to our delight, they did, and it rolled yesterday.

Here are some pictures from the parade:




This is the Super Kmart, in whose parking lot the floats always line up.










Both shopping center parking lots that the parade uses as end points looked like this...















I couldn't stray far from the float we were on, so these pictures aren't great, but all the stores were gutted or boarded up.

And I couldn't get close enough to this float to get a good shot, but these guys used the ubiquitous FEMA tarps as decoration on the roof of their float...
















And then here's a couple of shots of the boys...
























It was cold, but not so bad once we started rockin'...

But Waveland was a mess. The only stores that seemed to be open were Wal-Mart and Rite Aid. And six months after the hurricane, there are still so many buildings that are just standing in ruins, not being fixed or demolished or what have you.

SET UP AGAIN?

So we've all heard by now that Bushco has approved the sale of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company to Dubai Ports World (a company owned by the United Arab Emirates), giving this UAE firm control of many operations, including security, at the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Does such a move ring a bell?

Anyone remember who "backed" Securacom (now Stratesec)--the company in charge of electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International, and United Airlines--for which George W.'s brother Marvin sat on the board of directors?

It was the Kuwait-American corporation, another Middle Eastern-related company.

And we know how well security was handled at Dulles, WTC, and on United Airlines...

LANOIS, ABRAMOFF, DICK

Saw the big Daniel Lanois show in Hattiesburg this past Friday...he played at a club that holds 125 or so people a week after he played Carnegie Hall and two days after hanging out at the Grammys with U2...His show was really good, and it was interesting to watch his technique...he never used a pick on either the Les Paul or the pedal steel...when playing the LP, he playing single notes with his fingers all against each other, like his whole hand was a giant flipper-pick...

I was intrigued by that because that sort of technique guarantees you're not going to be ripping hot licks, which is good. I tried it myself when I got home, but I don't know if I can pull it off--the flipper-pick, I mean..

Abramoff

And at the Lanois show, I talked to a friend of mine who lives in another town and it turns out he did some odd jobs for Jack Abramoff 3 or 4 years ago. This friend prefers not to be named, so I'll call him No Name. No Name lived in D.C. during this time and was hooked up with Abramoff jobs through a friend of his that worked full-time for Casino Jack.

There's nothing juicy to tell really--No Name just organized Abramoff's books, cleaned out his garage, and helped organize some files. No Name said there was what seemed to be some unsavory stuff in those files, but nothing obviously incriminating.

Dickshot

And No Name was telling me that he didn't like Air America maybe as much as he wanted to because he felt like they were just engaging in the same kind of smearing and name-calling that the right wing engages in, which is a criticism I've heard a lot. But I think if you actually listen to Air America, particularly my favorite show the Majority Report, you might feel differently.

I mean, it's one thing to tune in for a minute or two and hear Sam Seder refer to Sean Hannity as a "pig," or whatever, but if you hang around and listen for a while, you'll realize that for the most part, they are fair. For example, they don't smear all Republicans and conservatives--they acknowledge that not only is it permissible to have an opinion different than theirs, it's healthy and useful. But they do direct name-calling and derision toward people that really do deserve it--i.e., the neocon gang that lied us into the Iraq war.

But I say all that to say that I'm glad the Dick Cheney shooting spree is such a big story. Not that there aren't more important stories to discuss, but I think the left-wingers should always take anything that happens and say "how would the rightwingers mock us for this if this had happened to one of ours" and then do that times one hundred...

In other news, my father says he is becoming increasingly apolitical because the "two sides" are just so nasty to each other, and he may not even vote anymore. WTF?

REPUBLICAN CARICATURES

This was the caption to a photo of Dick Cheney on the AFP site in a slideshow of pictures of Muslim protests about some cartoons I've never even seen:

US Vice President Dick Cheney, seen here in January 2006, said in a television interview that Muslim violence in response to newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was not justified(AFP/File/Don Emmert)

You read that right. Dick fuckin' Cheney has the nerve to suggest that violence is not justified when "cartoons" or "caricatures" are printed in the newspaper. But I seem to remember him arguing for, and then engaging in violence when caricatures of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi WMD program were printed in American papers. Dick even came up with the caricatures himself. Here's a really memorable one:

“...we believe that he [Saddam Hussein] has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

This is the entire problem in a nutshell--the Muslim world feels it is under attack, and they jolly well should feel that way, because it is. Not necessarily for being Muslim--that's not the stated reason, anyway--but the people who are under attack do have that one thing in common.

But that's not what I was really trying to say--Cheney's comments about violence not being justified in this case illustrate very simply the rest of the world's problem with us, and that is, we require behavior from others that we do not adhere to ourselves. In other words, we fly into a (seemingly) unthinking rage after 9/11 and direct it mainly against a country that didn't even have anything to do with 9/11 yet argue every day that that was somehow justified but when they feel their religion is being shat upon by infidels and fly into a blind rage, Dick has the gall to say "your violence based on a caricature is not justified, but ours is."

And really this controversy sheds light on Republican/Rove/conservative methodology, which is to caricature everything. The caricature of John Kerry: French-looking flip-flopper. The caricature of tax cuts: "[B]y far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum."

On that note, the Wikipedia definition of "caricature" seems particularly apt:

A caricature is a humorous illustration that exaggerates or distorts the basic essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness.

Humorous distortions of the basic essence of something: sounds like everything today's Republicans stand for.

WHO'S SILLY NOW?

Just got back from a bread run to the grocery store...

Saw a bumper sticker I hadn't seen...tried to take a picture, but it didn't come out well in the dark.

But it was on the tailgate of one of those dually pickup trucks with a deep purple, tricked-out paint job. The back window had the slogan "Silly Boys Trucks Are For Girls" in silver lettering, it had the obligatory "Support The Troops" yellow ribbon magnets, and a Mississippi National Guard license plate.

The sticker said:

Silly Iraqis, Weapons of Mass Destruction Are For Americans"

Yes, those silly Iraqis and their silly IEDs and their silly insurgency. And the silly fact that they um, kinda sorta actually didn't at all have weapons of mass destruction. And all those silly dead and wounded Americans and Iraqis. It's just silly, is all it is...

Who is the silly one, I wonder? Them or us?

LET THEM EAT WAR!!!

This--Bush to seek $120 billion more for wars--is why this--the largest cut ever in the student loan program--is happening.

But don't worry if you can't afford to go/send your kid to college. There'll always be a cannon fodder slot open for them.

And how do Bush and the Grim Reapublicans plan to pay for these wars? Make the tax cuts permanent!!

It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Maybe to a psychopath...

A TALE OF TWO LETTERS...

So here's something funny...a letter to the editor in the Hattiesburg American that was published on their website this past Sunday was re-published today with a little tweaking...

And the interesting thing about it to me is that when it mentions me, it is referring to a letter about Bush's warrantless wiretaps that appeared only two days before...

My letter appeared Friday, Jan. 27, along with another from Dustin Keys, both about warrantless wiretapping. I had sent my letter in at least a week prior to its appearance in the newspaper, which is typical. Then a letter responding to my letter and the Keys letter appeared just two days later on Sunday, Jan. 29 and then was reprinted yet again with some editing today!!

WTF? As I said, I have to wait at least a week to see one of my letters in the paper, and this guy (who is actually the father of one of my friends from high school) gets a letter printed in two days and gets to have it reprinted a few days later with some edits?

Here are the two letters from Kenneth Hall, Sr.

From Sunday, Jan. 29:

Bush surveillance not against law


I just read the letters from Messrs. Keys and Kirby, both of which claim that President Bush has broken the law with his authorization of electronic surveillance of people with known and/or suspected terrorist connections. You'll be glad to know that I won't write about this again.

Let me say unequivocally that I am convinced that the president has not broken the law and I am glad that hearings will be conducted into the matter. I can only hope that Messrs. Keys and Kirby and others who feel that Bush broke the law will diligently keep up with those hearings. If they do, they'll find that the president is doing the right thing.

I'm personally grateful that Bush has authorized the NSA (National Security Agency) to conduct this surveillance. I have children and grandchildren who I hope will have a long life in the pursuit of happiness, not to be interrupted by terrorists who have committed their lives to killing us by the most violent means possible.

It is important to note that the very provision of the law that Mr. Keys cites is precisely what Attorney General Gonzales has done. It's also important to note that members of both U.S. House and Senate Intelligence Committees from both parties have said that they were briefed on the matter, that they did not object & that they in fact support the concept.

Kenneth Hall Sr.

Picayune



Originally published January 29, 2006

From Wed., Feb. 1:

Bush is doing the right thing


I read the letters from Dustin Keys and Clinton Kirby, both of which claim that President Bush has broken the law with his authorization of electronic surveillance of people with known and/or suspected terrorist connections. You'll be glad to know that I won't write about this again.

Let me say unequivocally that I am convinced that the president has not broken the law, and I am glad that hearings will be conducted into the matter. I can only hope that Mr. Keys and Mr. Kirby and others who feel that Bush broke the law will diligently keep up with those hearings. If they do, they'll find that the president is doing the right thing.

I'm personally grateful that Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to conduct this surveillance. I have children and grandchildren whom I hope will have long lives that will not to be interrupted by terrorists who have committed their lives to killing us by the most violent means possible.

It is important to note that the very provision of the law that Mr. Keys cites is precisely what U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has done. It's also important to note that members of both U.S. House and Senate Intelligence committees from both parties have said they were briefed on the matter, that they did not object and that they in fact support the concept.

Kenneth Hall Sr.,

Picayune



Originally published February 1, 2006

Really the only changes in the second version are that instead of referring to me and Keys as "Messrs. Keys and Kirby" we are now "Mr. Keys and Mr. Kirby" and that the word "convinced" is italicized.

But what is up with that?

CALLING BULLSHIT...SOTU EDITION

My thinking about the Cindy Sheehan incident throughout today, with my latest thoughts first....

Did Beverly Young really wear such a shirt to a formal event?

I have yet to see a picture of Beverly Young, the wife of Republican congressman Bill Young, in a T-shirt that said "Support The Troops." In contrast, photos of Cindy Sheehan's shirt have been widely posted, and there's even a picture of her wearing it in the Capitol building.

I'm still skeptical about this incident--do spouses of members of Congress typically wear T-shirts to formal government events? Wouldn't Young's husband have talked her out of wearing such a shirt, if only because of the formality of the event? If she was being hassled by Capitol Police, would/could she not have told them who she was and who to call to verify her identity? Could she not have just put on a jacket?



Bev Young A Plant (or would the R's even go to that much trouble)?

Just a thought...could it be that the REPUBLICAN congressman's wife wore her "Support The Troops" shirt precisely so she could be thrown out so that media stories would then mention two ejections from the SOTU, one on each side of the partisan divide. Was Cindy Sheehan thrown out before Beverly Young (the congressman's wife), did it happen simultaneously, or was Young thrown out before Sheehan.

The possibility that Beverly Young might be a plant would help explain why she wasn't hauled off to jail in handcuffs as Sheehan was. In fact, why wasn't Young "taken downtown?" Is it because she's the wife of a REPUBLICAN congressman? Or because she was merely a plant and her job was done?

Also, the story about Beverly Young being thrown out didn't seem to surface until today (unless I just missed it)...did Young actually get thrown out at all? Did the Young incident even happen? I mean, it probably did, but you never know...

Sheehan's Ejection > Young's "Ejection"

This MSNBC.com story attempts to show that SOTU ejection was "bipartisan." The lead sentence says:

"Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, wasn’t the only one ejected from the House gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt with a war-related slogan that violated the rules. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave."

They undoubtedly were both "ejected" from the gallery (a security guard says in this story that the congressman's wife left of her own accord), but with a crucial difference: Sheehan was led away in handcuffs, booked and jailed. The congressman's wife argued with police, according to both stories. There is no mention of whether or not she went to jail, so presumably she didn't.

MY LETTER TO TRENT AND THAD ABOUT A-LIE-TOE

Please do not vote to confirm Samuel Alito and please do not invoke the nuclear option over the coming filibuster. Alito is a radical conservative, unlike you. Also, President Bush has been disastrous for our country, his approval ratings of late have been the worst since Nixon, and he has recently admitted to one of the most audaciously illegal presidential power grabs in American history. He will more than likely face impeachment proceedings sometime in the coming months.

This is a frightening time to be an American. I fear the worst for our country if Alito is granted a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. I know that in general, you like to align yourself with President Bush because he is a Republican and claims to be conservative. But President Bush is radical and his presidency has been a miserable failure.

His ethical lapses have only recently been beginning to receive much scrutiny, such as signing statements appended to legislation, spying on Americans without warrants, no-bid contracts in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast, and so forth. And it has yet to be revealed exactly how close he was to Jack Abramoff.

President Bush is bad for America and really doesn't deserve to be given whatever he wants just because he's the president. He has failed the American people in the following ways:

-the worst terrorist attack in American history happened on his watch
-he has created (intentionally, I believe) a record deficit
-he misled us about WMD in Iraq
-he let Osama bin Laden go in Afghanistan
-he appointed an unqualified man to head FEMA which was of no help at all in the aftermath of Katrina
-he has personally authorized warrantless wiretapping of American citizens
-poverty has increased every year he has been in office
-by the end of his first term, he had lost more jobs than any president since Herbert Hoover

You get the picture. Any president with such a dismal, questionable record does not deserve to have his choice of a person to sit on the Supreme Court for a lifetime appointment. Of course any vacancies should be filled, but filled by someone who is more reasonable and less radical than Alito.

That is my sincere wish as your humble constituent. I doubt anything I have to say will change your mind, but if I don't have hope, I don't have anything.

MATTHEWS AND WHAT NOT...

So I emailed Hardball's advertisers as per the "Boycott Hardball" campaign. So far just got a generic customer service response back from Toyota. This site has an explanation of what the boycott is all about.

Political Bias Study

My dad emailed this story about how people make political decisions irrationally. I ain't buyin' it, because even the study in the story asserts bias on the part of the participants based on the fact that they are "ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted."

I can agree that most people make all decisions irrationally, political decisions included. But unlike my father, who has concluded that all political convictions are merely opinions, I contend that there are those who can see the merit or lack thereof of a policy or candidate's claim and then decide to support or reject it accordingly. That is how it should work.

But I realize that that is not in vogue these days--being a member of the reality-based community just ain't fly, yo. Dis here da shizzle peeps be bumpin':

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

That is of course from the famous Ron Suskind piece published in the New York Times Magazine on Oct. 17, 2004.

And that's what this story about political bias gets to. The story draws this conclusion from the study: "The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making."

It's the culmination of the decades-long war on facts, on journalism, the truth, etc. David Brock nailed it when he said in the Republican Noise Machine that one the biggest goals of the conservative movement has been to get the press and the public to treat facts as opinions and opinions as facts (I'm roughly paraphrasing without the book in front of me).

If this becomes the conventional wisdom (if it hasn't already), then there's no hope for our political discourse, as Bob Somerby has tirelessly and painstakingly pointed out. I mean, there's already so little hope that this study is little more than spitting on a rotten corpse, but still...

POLISHING A TURD...

So now the Bushistas' preferred term for "warrantless wiretapping" is "terrorist surveillance." I'm sure the lap dogs of the press will, well, lap it right up and when someone has the gall from here on out to refer to Bush's illegal program as "warrantless wiretapping" or "domestic spying," they'll be all-too-quickly reminded of what the Bushies call it. And then if that someone has the temerity to suggest that if something that walks, talks, sounds, and looks like a duck is a "duck," the audience will be assured by the butt-kissing host that such nomenclature is merely the biased opinion of one who is clearly not on the president's team (with the subtext being that if this person doesn't like "terrorist surveillance," how can you listen to anything else they have to say).

Karl Rove must have read "Manufacturing Consent" or "Necessary Illusions" a time or two--he's setting the "bounds of the expressible."

Is OBL dead? Does it matter?

I watched "Loose Change" on the recommendation of a friend (more than a recommendation, actually--he burned me a DVD of it) and I have to say that I found it very intriguing. I watched it just out of curiosity because I knew that the idea that 9/11 was an "inside job" was utter bullshit, primarily because bin Laden admitted to it.

But that is addressed in the movie. The "bin Laden confession tape" does have the aura of being a fake, since he and some of his people are wearing gold rings which is forbidden by Islam, and the left-handed Osama is seen writing on a pad with his right hand, and so forth.

Whether you believe he's alive or dead, you can't argue that his popping up from time to time helps the Bushies even though it theoretically shouldn't--because it means he's still at large, taunting Bush. But like "Loose Change" pointed out, anytime you hear a new statement that "probably" comes from bin Laden, remember that he's "probably" dead.

I mean, in his statement, "bin Laden" recommends the work of a relatively obscure leftist author and cites polls that show Americans' disapproval of the Iraq war. How the hell is he getting this information if he is alive and in the no man's land between Pakistan and Afghanistan? How does he have time to read this leftist book and why would he read it to begin with? Why would he care what an infidel has to say?

Then all the rightwing blowhards go on their shows and say "hey, the Democrats sound just like Osama." I'm not saying Osama is alive or dead or was or wasn't involved in 9/11, but these kinds of statements being released seem to only give Republicans fodder to impugn Democrats. And unfortunately, the Democratic party is just the left wing of the War Party, as Justin Raimondo points out in his perceptive-as-usual takedown of Hillary Clinton's Iran saber-rattling.

RHETORIC CHECK

If there is an invasion of Iran, I just wanted to note that in this, the pre-war period, the rhetoric being bandied about by Bush and Rumsfailed and everyone else is not about bringing democracy to Iran. It's not about that even a little bit, it's about keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, period. So when we finally make the mistake of invading Iran or provoking them into lobbing a missile at us or whatever and then try to stay for decades and Bush says "that's because we started the war to bring democracy to Iran", let's remember what he and others are saying in the run-up to this next war.

Let's check some rhetoric:

Here's Bush from Jan. 13, 2006:

"Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a great threat to the security of the world," said Bush, adding: "Countries such as ours have a great obligation to step up, working together to send a message to the Iranians that their behavior, trying to clandestinely develop a nuclear weapon, or using the guise of a civilian nuclear program to attain a nuclear weapon, is unacceptable."

Bush said that "a world without Zionism" was the goal of the Iranian regime. "The current president of Iran has announced that the destruction of Israel is an important part of their agenda. That is unacceptable. The development of a nuclear weapon is a step closer to that agenda."

"It is the world's interest that Iran not have a nuclear weapon," said Bush, insisting that Iran must not "have capacity to blackmail free societies."

Also from that same meeting with new German chancellor Merkel, and reported on Newsmax with the headline "Bush: Iran Intends To Nuke Israel":

"I want to remind you that the current president of Iran has announced that the destruction of Israel is an important part of their agenda. And that's unacceptable. And the development of a nuclear weapon, it seems like to me, would make them a step closer to achieving that objective."

Here's a funny comment from Condoleezza Rice:

“We’ve got to finally demonstrate to Iran that it can’t with impunity just cast aside the just demands of the international community,” Rice said Sunday during a trip to Africa. ("Just because we do it, doesn't mean they can," she went to say--yeah, right.)


So I'll be checking the rhetoric from time to time, just so we know where we stand with the Commander-in-thief.

Val's Comment

And I thought commenter Val had a lot of good things to say over at the Huffington Post. I haven't verified every historical fact or claim therein, but the comment strikes me as a good summary of recent U.S.-Iran dealings and a good refutation of the rhetoric currently being leveled at Iran. I reproduce it without permission, but will remove it if asked:


Well…

From what I have been able to read so far, it looks like WWIII over oil is a certainty. But, I get ahead of myself, first, the background.

We know for a fact that Cheney was involved in secret meetings with ENRON and others concerning energy.

We know for a fact that ENRON went bankrupt trying to keep open an energy factory in India.

We know for a fact that Halliburton has been operating and conducting business with Iran for some years now.

We know for a fact that ENRON sold some of it’s overseas programs to GE, a company that has ex-operatives within the Bush administration.

We know for a fact now that the neo-con’s wanted a “Pearl Harbor-like” attack so they could push their agenda.

We know that nine months after Bush takes office that [Pearl Harbor-like] attack occurs on 9/11.

We know that Bush links Iraq, Iran and North Korea into the Axis of Evil.

We know that Bush sent Bolton to the UN.

We know that Bush invaded Afghanistan but was planning the war on Iraq from even before the Afghan invasion.

We know that Bush has all but forgotten about Afghanistan and Bin Laden, but is using Al-Qaeda as the reason to nation-build Iraq’s puppet government.

We know that WMD’s is used as the premise for the attack on Iraq by admission from Wolfowitz.

We know that WMD’s is being used at the premise for creating a nuclear crisis with Iran.

We know that Sharon [of Israel] was in a CHEMICALLY INDUCED COMA following his “stroke”.

So, what DON’T we know?

How about that Britian wants to move gas from area’s in Iran to areas in India. (ENRON had a factory in India, GE bought some ENRON foreign assets, Britain wants to have energy transfer to India, Halliburton has been working in Iran)

How about that the energy transfer would have to move through Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan? (Afghanistan – Taliban removed from power, Iraq – Saddam Hussein removed from power, Pakistan – Musharref friendly to America, at the moment, Iran – Next on the invasion list!)

How about that Iran is trying to sign a new energy transfer protocol THIS YEAR? (August 21, 2004, Iran takes on west's control of oil trading, Iran is to launch an oil trading market for Middle East and Opec producers that could threaten the supremacy of London's International Petroleum Exchange. A contract to design and establish a new platform for crude, natural gas and petrochemical trades is expected to be signed with an international consortium within days.)

How about one of Bolton’s FIRST acts at the UN was to start a case against Iran? (In Switzerland last year [2004], Bolton riled European allies when he voiced skepticism about European negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program.)

How about that America planes have repeatedly violated Iranian airspace which is an act of war? ("While the objective behind the fighters' violation of the Iranian air space is not known yet, some military specialists believe such moves are aimed at assessing the sensitivity of the Islamic Republic's anti-aircraft defense system," it added. It said [U.S.] military and air force officials had refrained from commenting on the incident when contacted.)

How about the U.S. charged that Iran was in violation of the NPT only to later concede that it did in fact have the right to peaceable nuclear energy, only to then later take the stance that even peaceable nuclear energy should be kept from Iran? (German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer here Monday reiterated Iran’s right to use peaceful nuclear energy amid continued U.S. efforts to politicize Iran’s civilian nuclear program.

How about that the U.S. had ADDITIONAL protocols ADDED just for Iran so that they couldn’t comply with the IAEA’s established protocols? (The extraordinary power of the US was again on full display on Sept 11 when France, Germany and Britain simultaneously agreed to a “November dead line for Iran to dispel concern that it has a covert atom bomb program, according to a draft resolution.” (Reuters) This means that Iran, who has already been cleared by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) for not having processed enriched uranium (even though that, in itself, is not forbidden under the NPT) must “prove a negative.” It must somehow prove it does not have something it does not have. Sound familiar? Of course, it is precisely the same trap that was set (successfully) for Saddam Hussein, who had no WMD and who eventually agreed to all of the terms of intrusive inspection regimen that were demanded of him. The UN did not call on Iran to cease all uranium enrichment activities, the IAEA did, and even they admit it was illegal for them to do so. Tests of soil samples have shown no signs of nuclear activities at a site in northern Iran, a diplomat in Vienna said Tuesday. The diplomat said the soil samples of the Lavizan military establishment showed "negative," meaning that the samples contained no traces of nuclear materials.)

How about Israel threatened to strike Iran if the U.S. or the UN wouldn’t? (A military strike is among Israel's options to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Wednesday in the latest threat by the Jewish state against its arch-foe.)

How about that with the NPT and “nuclear weapons” rationales failing, the U.S. is resorting to “terrorism” as justification to invade Iran? (There are indications that the US government is planning to use Hamas as a pretext for a potential attack against Iran.)

How about the fact that Sharon was about to attack Iran? (The Bush Administration urged the members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to approve an October 31 deadline on Iran for compliance or face sanctions at the UN Security Council. Bush lost that vote. Had the motion passed, that would have started the countdown to an Israel-Iran war just days before the November 2nd elections.)

How about the fact that Iran and China were working on a deal for oil exportation? (Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has said in Tehran that Beijing opposes US efforts to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear program. China's oil giant Sinopec Group has signed a $70 billion oil and natural gas agreement with Iran, which is China's biggest energy deal with the No. 2 OPEC producer.)

How about AFTER all of this, Iran then reached a deal with the EU to halt uranium enrichment! (A senior Iranian official said on Thursday he was optimistic Iran would halt its uranium enrichment program as Europe demands, in a move aimed at easing fears that Iran is secretly developing atomic weapons.)

How about that certain friendly “organizations” told Bush that Iran, not Iraq, but that IRAN has a “secret nuclear plant”? (An Iranian opposition group has claimed evidence of a secret plant where Iran is producing enriched uranium. The New York Times [remember Judy Miller?] reported Wednesday the National Council for Resistance in Iran said the Islamic Republic was producing enriched uranium at the plant, which had not been disclosed to U.N. inspectors. The White House said Thursday that it could not verify an Iranian exile opposition group's [remember Chalabi?] charge that the Islamic republic was running a secret nuclear bomb facility near Tehran.)

How about AFTER ALL OF THIS, THE U.S. AND BUSH ARE STILL CLAIMING IRAN WILL MAKE NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ARE WILLING TO START A WAR WITH IRAN! (As was the case with Iraq in the months immediately preceding Bush's invasion, the IAEA has found no evidence that NPT-proscribed materials have been stolen or diverted, nor that Iran is engaged in any NPT-prohibited activity. In particular, there is no evidence that Iran has been enriching uranium in the facilities it has constructed or is constructing. The Atlantic Monthly magazine reported in its latest issue that the Pentagon held simulations of a U.S. military strike on Iranian bases and nuclear facilities. The magazine said the recent war games also included a ground invasion of Iran. The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.)

How about that AFTER ALL OF THIS, THE U.S. AND BUSH GOT EVEN MORE PROTOCOL’S PUT ONTO IRAN THROUGH THE IAEA SO THEY CAN THEN GET THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL INVOLVED SO THEY CAN GET A UN MANDATE FOR INVASION! (In a defeat for the Bush administration, the 35 countries of the United Nations nuclear agency board adopted a mildly worded resolution Monday welcoming Iran's freeze of a sensitive part of its nuclear program. The US is preparing for the possibility that it will have to deal with Iran's nuclear program without the assistance of the UN Security Council. In the past weeks the administration has been working with European and Japanese allies on a "menu" of sanctions that could be imposed on Iran even if the issue is not referred to the UN Security Council. According to well-placed sources in Washington, the sanctions being discussed are focused on trade issues, since almost half of Iran's trade is with Europe and Japan.)

How about that GE [remember, they bought ENRON assets?] halts business orders in Iran? (General Electric Co., which has been accused of collecting "blood money" by doing business in Iran, will stop accepting any new orders for business in the country, company officials said Wednesday.)

How about a “blast” went off near an Iranian “factory” and an “airplane” was seen at the same time? (Initial reports said that the plane, which was not officially identified, had fired a missile. The possibility was later raised that it could have been an Iranian plane and that it had jettisoned a fuel tank that had happened to land in the area. The television report initially quoted witnesses as saying Wednesday's explosion was the result of a missile fired from a plane seen overhead. However, it later said the blast could have been a falling fuel tank from an Iranian aircraft.)

How about THAT AFTER ALL OF THIS, THE U.S. AND BUSH ARE PUSHING FOR WAR WITH IRAN, AND, COULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS! (Philip Giraldi, a former intelligence officer in the CIA (and DIA), claims that the United States is developing a plan for the bombing of supposed military targets in Iran, which would include the use of NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The US strike would take place after a 9/11-type terrorist attack on the US. However, the US attack would not depend on Iran actually being involved in the terrorism [Operation Northwoods style]. In short, the planned attack on Iran would be analogous to the unprovoked attack on Iraq. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing - that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.)

How about that not a month ago, the Iranian Guard Commander died in a “plane crash”? There were conflicting reports on what caused the crash. The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported the plane crashed because its landing gear jammed, preventing the wheels from being fully deployed. But the Revolutionary Guards' spokesman, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, blamed bad weather and engine failure.

ISN'T THIS "FUNNY"...

Don't push for impeachment, Cindy Sheehan. Let's all just laugh our way into the endless wars...

STOP ME IF YOU THINK YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE...

Doesn't this all sound a little too familiar? We're told a Middle Eastern country run by a madman has the intention to acquire nuclear weapons, so we cooperate to get them hauled before the Security Council, where a resolution will be written in such a way that this madman's country will be in violation of it before the ink is dry on the paper.

And that all of this is happening prior to a midterm election. Does it sound remotely similar to anything you've heard before? That this madman's Middle Eastern country is harboring and sponsoring terrorists--al Qaeda and such? That this country is a grave threat to us?

And the media talks about this country's "threat" to our country as a foregone conclusion--i.e., this country is a threat because they talk about it as being, therefore it's a threat, no evidence necessary. But they'll try to manufacture some anyway, just to muddy the water. Just so they'll have something that we'll have to try to disprove, and something to create the official story.

I wrote this yesterday but was too lazy to post it until I read, on Americablog, this much more eloquent, complete, and seasonally coordinated piece from Atrios:

How It Goes


Winter/Spring - The clone army of foreign policy "experts" from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran's human rights violations.

Spring/Summer - "Liberal hawks" point out that all serious people understand the serious threat posed by serious Iran, and while they acknowledge grudgingly that the Bush administration has fucked up everything it touches, they stress, and I mean stress, that we really must support the Bush administration's serious efforts to deal with the serious problem and that criticisms of such serious approaches to a serious problem are highly irresponsible and come only from irrational very unserious Bush haters who would rather live in Iran than the U.S.

Late Summer - Rumsfeld denies having an Iran war plan "on his desk." He refuses to answer if he has one "in his file cabinet." Andy Card explains that you don't roll out new product until after labor day.

Early Fall - Bush suddenly demands Congress give him the authority to attack Iran to ensure they "disarm." Some Democrats have the temerity to ask "with what army?" Marshall Wittman and Peter Beinart explain that courageous Democrats will have the courageous courage to be serious and to confront the "grave threat" with seriousness and vote to send other peoples' kids off to war, otherwise they'll be seen as highly unserious on national security. Neither enlists.

Late October - Despite the fact that all but 30 Democrats vote for the resolution, Republicans run a national ad campaign telling voters that Democrats are objectively pro-Ahmadinejad. Glenn Reynolds muses, sadly, that Democrats aren't just anti-war, but "on the other side." Nick Kristof writes that liberals must support the war due to Ahmadinejad's opposition to gay rights in Iran.

Election Day - Democrats lose 5 seats in the Senate, 30 in the House. Marshall Wittman blames it on the "pro-Iranian caucus."

The Day After Election Day - Miraculously we never hear another word about the grave Iranian threat. Peter Beinart writes a book about how serious Democrats must support the liberation of Venezuela and Bolivia.

David Kay and "State Of War"

Here's Andrea Mitchell on Hardball last (Thursday, Jan. 12) night pontificating about Iran's "secret nukes" and Chris Matthews treating Iran's "threat" to us as a foregone conclusion. I wasn't even aware that Iran was being accused of having "secret nukes"--I mean, I didn't realize that that was supposed to now be the official story. In "State Of War," James Risen points out that, as in Iraq before our invasion, we haven't had and currently don't have CIA/intelligence resources on the ground to even know these things, thanks to the cable that mistakenly identified our assets in Iran. And David Kay admits as much in this transcript.

And Risen points out that we, the U.S., gave Iran nuclear plans!

And if you haven't or don't have the time to read the book, here's a good synopsis at Alternet, complete with this great comment on the book's perspective (I tried to say something to this in effect in an earlier post, but this nails it):

The second, and more grave point is that James Risen is a complete sucker for Bush's tonic for the terrorist threat against America and the prevailing White House rationale for the invasion of Iraq: that we must spread the wings of democracy across the Middle East.

How a reporter can get so close to the White House Big Dogs and reveal such devastating evidence about their cynical geopolitical schemes while at the same time swallow the big narrative that underwrites them all is frankly quite stunning.

And of course, Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com turned in a good one on Iran yesterday.

DARKNESS FALLS ACROSS THE LAND...

...as Alito is sure to get confirmed. I emailed and called my senators, Lott and Cochran, but their vote was a foregone conclusion before Alito was even nominated.

And I posted a few days ago about my hope that Bush will discover who leaked "the Program" so we could all know who our newest national hero is. Turns out at least one of the leakers has now come forward voluntarily--that guy is a fuckin' badass. And his name is Russell Tice.

Now if only more people in the Bush administration would get some nuts like Tice, we could bring G.W. down.

I Ran So Far Away...

And then of course, everyone's scolding Iran again. Tsk, tsk, tsk! Not that nuclear proliferation is a good thing, but hypocrisy is worse. Let's remind ourselves once again that the U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to have used nuclear weapons against another country. And let's also remind ourselves that for every embassy hostage crisis, there's an installation of a monarch or an invitation into an evil triumvirate.

But no, our media will just blather on and on about how all these tinpot tyrants are such a serious threat to what they have to say is "the greatest country in the world," i.e., the U.S. For fuck's sake, we spend more money than any other country in the world on defense--in fact, soon we will be spening more than every country in the world combined, and we still feel that fucking Iran is a threat to us?

When will this madness end? The U.S. is the threat, for crying out loud. That's how the rest of the world sees it, anyway.

But really, we truly are living in a culture of fear, of give me convenience or give me death! If any country in the world has no reason to be afraid of or feel threatened by another country, it should be the U.S. Has all the money that has gone to "defense" over the years at the expense of social programs not been enough? Now they have to scare us into giving up our civil liberties, too?

Here's a sample of a letter from my hometown newspaper today:

I also support the Bush administration's decision to wiretap whatever/whenever,
foreign or domestic, any and all correspondence considered to be necessary for
national security.

Any abuse of this practice will be picked up immediately by the media and made public. So, Mr. Regl, this wire-tapping measure does not scare me in the slightest.

However, Islamic terrorists do.

What a good little culture warrior this guy is! He knows without a doubt that "it can't happen here!" We're too free--I mean, it's not as if American citizens can be held for three years without charge or anything! He has complete confidence in the media and their adversarial, brave reportage! And he completely trusts the public to be outraged if there are abuses! WHAT THE FUCK!


Why don't these people get it? Just like with the Soviet Union, the "threat" is mostly imagined (al Qaeda-real threat, Iraq-fake threat, Iran-fake threat)--we are fed fear every day so that the military-industrial complex can justify its existence--i.e., on defense contractor GE's MSNBC this evening, Chris Matthews was talking about the threat of Iran. If we're not afraid anymore, we might tell those guys to take a hike and give back some of that money.

In other, simpler, more famous words--"war is a racket." Here's one more quote from that book:

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

LETTER PRINTED, ETC.

My local paper finally printed my letter yesterday...then I got a call around 11:30 that morning from a gentleman who told me he appreciated the letter, thought it was well-written and so forth, but assured me he wasn't calling to "praise" me.

He said I should watch out for the editorial page editor because this gentleman said that some his letters to the editor have been changed and distorted by the editorial page editor...so far, all of mine have appeared exactly as I wrote them...

Comment

I received the following comment about my last post (I just want to address this because I don't get many comments that aren't from comment spammers)--in which I asked why we should care whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not because after all, the U.S. is the only country that has ever actually used them against an enemy:

the difference is that iran is headed by a nutcase who also wants to destroy israel, and denies the holocaust ever took place. with a guy like that holding a trigger to atommic weapons, no one can sleep easy. just because it isn't yr backyard doesn't mean it won't come bite you in the ass.

The thing is, what this commenter is saying works both ways. That's what I was trying to point out. You know that everywhere around the world people are saying "America is headed by a nutcase that wants to rule the world--he's invaded Iraq, propped up Israel and his country dropped two atomic bombs on Japan; with a guy like that holding a trigger to atomic weapons, no one can sleep easy."

What we must decide as American citizens is whether it is worth billions of dollars and thousands of lives (ours and theirs) to try to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of other countries because more than likely, they'll never be used except as a deterrent to us.

I mean, we invaded Iraq ostensibly to "disarm" Saddam, and by all Iraqi accounts, Iraq was still three years away from "the bomb" before the first Gulf war, and the U.S. took out Iraq's nuclear capabilities in that conflict--this according to James Risen's new book "State of War." In other words, Iraq not only didn't have nuclear weapons, they didn't even have the hope of getting them before the 2003 invasion. Contrary to Dick Cheney's fantasy, Iraq was nowhere near to "reconstituting" its nuclear program.

And frankly, Iran has every reason to be wary of and hostile toward the U.S. We installed the Shah, we sided with Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, and Bush said that Iran was a member of the "axis of evil." We rattled our sabers in their general direction, and they're rattling right back.

All of this could be solved through diplomatic channels, regardless of whether the president of Iran hates Jews and denies the Holocaust or not. We don't have to like the policies of other countries and should condemn attitudes like those of Iran's president, but we also don't have to sacrifice our loved ones and billions of dollars just because one Iranian is anti-Semitic. If we invaded every country that had an anti-Semitic leader, we'd go broke quick fast in a hurry.

Car Fire

Here's a picture I took of a car on fire with my new Audiovox SMT 5600 phone. That thing rocks!!!

OH GREAT...

This story about Iran announcing its intention to restart its search for nuclear fuel was a headline on the MSN homepage this morning, where it said something like "Paper: Iran to Restart Nuclear Program" or some such.

Well, bully for Iran! Since the United States is the only country in the entire history of forever to have used nuclear weapons against another country (and are doing so at this very moment) we are really in the morally strong position to discourage Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Don't let them fool us again! For one thing, who cares if Iran has nuclear weapons? We have an enormous stockpile with which no other country on earth can even begin to compete. The Cold War generation lived through the supposed constant threat of Russian nukes going off any minute and yet we never invaded the Soviet Union.

We've already heard about how al Qaeda is hiding out in Iran, or at least that's what the headlines say even though the stories themselves are about complicated prisoner transfers. We've heard how the new president of Iran is a Holocaust denier and was supposedly one of the hostage-takers in 1979. And now this latest news completes the demonization.

Our only hope is that Bush will be hobbled by the NSA scandal, Jack Abramoff, and God knows what else is going to come to light in the next few months so we no spouses have to have a new sticker on their car in addition to the one they already have: "Half of my heart is in Iran."

STATE OF WAR

Got the Risen book last night and have been reading it in my spare time. It's very disturbing, as you might imagine. The book's subtitle, "The Secret History Of The CIA And The Bush Administration" gives a clue to what's so disturbing--all the secrecy.

Risen talks about secret courts, secret signings, secret prisons, secret briefings, etc. I hope Bush's investigation of the leaking of "the Program" does find out the name of the person or persons who leaked this stuff to Risen, because that person is a hero.

The revelations in the book are not exactly new to those who read the progressive blogs, or even those who can read between the lines of the mainstream media. But it's still sickening, stunning stuff and I'm only up to p. 57.

Unspoken

But what keeps striking me as I read this is, "Is all this really necessary?" All this spying and torture and indefinite imprisonment and intimidation of Congress, supposedly to keep another terror attack from happening?

I mean, I've got a good way to keep another terror attack from happening--stop provoking people around the world. Like in Iraq, for example. Let's leave them the hell alone--get out immediately and try as best we can to fix what we've fucked up.

But I guess you can't make billions of dollars in profits if you don't provoke a few oil-rich countries every now and then. And that's really the crux of the biscuit.

We can put Dick, Halliburton, Shell, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, etc. out of business very easily. Ask Willie Nelson.

And that's the unspoken part of all that Risen is describing--the assumption that America needs to keep on intimidating and provoking people around the world, and given that that is the case, there needs to be this elaborate, secret, civil-liberty-crushing operation that tries to minimize what everyone knows to be an inevitable result of meddling.

"Protecting The Country"

Let's face it, George Bush isn't "protecting" our country or ensuring our "national security." By which I mean, for example, that poverty has risen every year he's been in office after decreasing every year Clinton was in office. Or that the most devastating act of terrorism in the U.S. happened on Bush's watch. Or that American jobs are being outsourced. And then, after letting jobs leave the country, he made it harder to clear debts and get a fresh start. Oh, and then, after losing your job, maybe you also lost retirement and/or pension.

Bush protect this country? It's a fucking bad joke, man.

WELL-MEANIES LIKE TO SPY ON PEOPLE (and a story of an argument)

Cynthia Tucker has a great post at Working For Change about what it means to be a well-meanie...the subhead to her article: "Selfishness disguised as hard-headed compassion" is as good a definition of "well-meanie" as I've yet been able to manufacture. Here's a quote:

So the last thing we should do is establish a broad social safety net that provides generous health care and raises the minimum wage and ensures decent housing for all. Why, any one of those things could prove absolutely ruinous to the poor!

That political philosophy -- which claims to be a hard-headed compassion rather than the hard-hearted selfishness it really is -- has become the conventional wisdom. But it's an odd thing for a nation that claims to be overwhelmingly Christian. There is nothing in the New Testament that says that helping the poor merely makes them worse off.

And that reminds me of a discussion I had with a family member the day after Christmas. This family member (f.m. from here on out) used to be a liberal and has traveled the world, received two masters' degrees, a doctorate, and a master of divinity degree and is pretty smart.

F.M. and I have had many political discussions and it seems we are diametrically opposed even though I basically got my politics from f.m. Anyway, I was trying to drive home the point (as I have done before) that there exist objective truths/facts about the world that are neither liberal nor conservative and that there is in fact such a thing as an unpolitical truth (because f.m. had told me two months ago that f.m. couldn't read about politics because each side distorted the facts to fit its bias).

Anyhoo, f.m. basically said, no, everyone is biased--libs and cons. I asked for specificity about which issues f.m. sees this happening with. After f.m. hemmed and hawed, offered then rejected welfare as an example, I said--well, how about Social Security privatization?

F.M. immediately says, with no prompting from me--"well, that's not a good example of what I'm talking about because obviously if all your retirement is in the stock market and the stock market is down when you want to retire, you're screwed." Oh my!

F.M. kindly made my point for me! I said, "well but that is a perfect example of what I'm talking about--you just cited an obvious, objective fact that shows that privatizing Social Security ain't a great idea." Well, we never resolved anything, but I was astonished and pleased to see that even if f.m. won't acknowledge it, f.m. knows what I'm talking about.

My hopes for 2006

1. Republicans out of power in one or both houses

2. Rove indicted

3. MSM indicted

4. Abramoff brings down Republicans--and some bad Democrats

5. Iraq war ends

6. War on terror replaced by non-provocation policy

7. I get rich and famous (for doing something positive and productive)