IF I HAD MY WAY...

Here's a Memorial Day post of some Kurt Vonnegut stuff (without permission, of course):

From the chapter "When I Felt The Bullet Enter My Heart"

"We are gathered here, friends...to honor...children dead,
all dead, all murdered in war. It is customary on days like this to call such
lost children men...I do not say that children at war do not die like
men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame
they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic
holidays. But they are murdered children all the same."


Here's the part that always got me:

"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere
respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend
the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and
viciousness of all mankind.

Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns..."

Already

And that passage led me to extrapolate the song "Already" from it:

When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I felt more like casualty than hero
Though that's not how you'll remember me
How will you remember me?

Glory glory hallelujah
Don't let anyone fool you
A beating heart's more glorious than a purple one

If I had my way there'd be no Memorial Day
Or armies to fight in
Or boundaries to fight over
If that sounds naive, then that sounds naive
Consider that there's no blood left in my brain

Then I had this dreadful thought...

I will miss
everything
I will miss
everything
I will miss
everything
everything
I will miss everything

I'm already dead

Fighting For Slavery

And then these lines occurred to me last night and this morning. Didn't have much of a chance to flesh them out, but here they are:

No one ever says you're fighting for slavery
For tyranny, hegemony
That would just be uncool
So they convince you it's for liberty
For freedom, democracy
Who are they trying to fool
What are they trying to pull

One More Memorial Day Thought

And I've mentioned this on the blog before, but it bears repeating. My paternal grandfather was Lt. Col. in the 5th Army and was stationed in Italy during WWII. Long story short, there was a hard winter and he didn't get the winter clothes he had requested, so his men suffered and he felt responsible. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent home.

That's the basic story that I've heard. The family didn't talk about it a lot, and I don't think that my grandfather himself ever once mentioned to me the war or his role in it. So that's all I really have to go on, what I've been told a time or two about what happened.

By all accounts, my grandfather was never the same after that. Of course, I wouldn't know the difference since I came along a good 25 years or so later.

And I guess that's why it was always somewhat creepy to me to hear my grandmother say "I love the military." Not that my grandmother was creepy or anything--quite the contrary, she was actually very cool. But she had this inexplicable good feeling for the military, even though war screwed up her husband. I guess it's kind of like the "Laptop Bombardiers" --when you're not the one fighting, you think the fighting is pretty cool.

But my father, who escaped Vietnam only by having had an inherited bone disorder that left his hip less than ideal (but perfectly useful), was not into that at all and didn't want me playing with plastic "army men" or even toy guns. So he helped break the military career path of our family (his father and grandfather were West Pointers), for which I am thankful.

And now, with my own son, I must concur with Truckstop Honeymoon's great tune "No Child Of Mine": "no child of mine/is gonna die for the oil man...I will sacrifice no child of mine/it's too high a price to pay for/nothing but a ribbon to hang upon my door."

LETTER NEVER SENT

So I'm looking at the online editorial page of my hometown newspaper and see a letter from a guy who's upset about the "Da Vinci Code." He spouts the usual mumbo jumbo about how the founding fathers and the Pilgrims and on and on meant for America to be a Christian nation.

Then he uses a quote from Jedediah Morse, who he says is the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code. I immediately thought, "I thought Samuel Morse invented the telegraph." Well, it turns out that it was Samuel, not Jedediah. But in my reading about Samuel (Jedediah was his father), I learn that Sammy Morse ran for mayor of New York on the Nativist ticket and agitated in favor of slavery.

So I'm like, here's this nutcase writing in to the local paper spouting some nonsense about Christian nations and why aren't Christians more upset and he quotes Jed Morse thinking he's quoting Sam Morse and I'm like--this must not stand.

So the guy also used quotes from Benjamin Franklin about prayer and God will safeguard this nation or whatever, and I'm thinking "didn't Franklin like to get it on with hookers" or something. So I look that up, and it turns out that there's some dispute about his consorting with prostitutes, but that it's an indisputable fact that Franklin had an illegitimate son. Oh, and I also came across this letter in which Franklin says he has his doubts about the divinity of Jesus.

So I'm thinking, this guy who's written to the paper probably isn't aware that Morse dug slavery and Franklin fooled around out of wedlock and wasn't sure if Jesus was a god or not. So I wrote a response to his letter and I was pretty happy with it and I emailed it to my wife for her to look at. She wrote back and said it was cool, and I was all set to email it to the newspaper, but then said to myself, "Why start shit with this guy over this?"

Life's too short to sit and straighten out everybody's factual errors and faulty reasoning. So I'm not sending in the letter, I'm just printing both of them here.

Here's the original:

America is losing its moral fiber
By Jack Faust


A consistent, insidious attack upon the moral fiber and foundation of our nation has been in effect for about the last 40 years, and has met barely a whimper of resistance from this nation's Christian population.

With the recent release of "The Da Vinci Code," yet another attack has been launched upon the veracity of the New Testament.

Irrefutable evidence shows that this nation was not only founded upon this faith, but it has also been sustained by it. The United States was a young nation carved out of the wilderness of the North American continent by Christian pilgrims, established in the name of God, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, according to the Mayflower Compact.

The founding fathers warned that our nation and government could not stand without the support and reliance upon the pillars of Christian morality.

George Washington observed that religion and morality are indispensable supports to political prosperity.

John Adams stated: "It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principle upon which freedom can securely stand."

In an 1836 American history book, Noah Webster wrote: "Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is in the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion."

I add finally this prophetic warning from Dr. Jedediah Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the Morse code, who said: "Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government and all the blessings which flow from them must fall with them."

What was once recognized as a vital component of American government and culture is rapidly disappearing with little resistance. The Christian community seems to have relegated itself to some kind of meek subculture rather than becoming salt and light in the midst of moral decay.

I conclude with words from Benjamin Franklin, who observed: "God governs in the affairs of men. We have been assured ... in the sacred writings, that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."

A final word of advice from Franklin: "Work as if you were to live 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow."

May God save and continue to bless America.


Jack Faust, a resident of Seminary, is a Community Columnist for the Hattiesburg American.


Here's my response that I'm not sending...

Jack Faust might want to reconsider which founding fathers and well-known Americans he quotes in defense of the myth that the United States is a Christian nation that should be upset about “The Da Vinci Code.”

For example, he correctly attributes a quote to Jedediah Morse but mistakenly refers to him as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code. Morse’s son Samuel is actually the man usually credited with the invention of the telegraph. Samuel Morse was also a defender of the un-Christian institution of slavery, writing in his1863 book “An Argument on the Ethical Position of Slavery” that “Christianity has been most successfully propagated among a barbarous race, when they have been enslaved to a Christian race. Slavery to them has been Salvation, and Freedom, ruin.”

Faust also quotes Benjamin Franklin as saying that “without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel." However, Franklin also said in 1790 that he had his doubts about the divinity of Jesus, which happens to be one of the themes in “The Da Vinci Code,” the movie Faust finds so appalling.

Surely Faust would not have us enslave members of our population just because Morse defended the idea or question the divinity of Jesus just because Franklin did. Yet the words of these men are what Faust selectively uses as “irrefutable evidence” to try to demonstrate that the United States was “founded upon this faith” of Christianity. If that’s true, then I’m a great-great-great-great grandson of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

IT'S THE IMPERIALISM, STUPID!

Great article from Antiwar.com that says what I've been saying for a while now: Leave other countries alone and then they will leave us alone. It's very simple and here's a sample:

Iran was an incipient democracy in 1953, but Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh — chosen by an elected parliament and hugely popular among Iranians — angered the West by nationalizing his country's oil industry. President Eisenhower sent the CIA to depose him. The coup was successful, but it set the stage for future disaster.

The CIA placed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi back on the Peacock Throne. His repressive rule led, 25 years later, to the Islamic Revolution. That revolution brought to power a clique of bitterly anti-Western mullahs who have spent the decades since working intensely, and sometimes violently, to undermine U.S. interests around the world.

If the Eisenhower administration had refrained from direct intervention against Iran in 1953, this religious regime probably would never have come to power. There would be no nuclear crisis. Iran might instead have become a thriving democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East.

Let's face it, our empire is killing us. It's killing thousands of other people too, but the empire is sold to us as something that's good for us. I mean, we already know it's not good for "them"--our subjects, I mean to say. Of course, we pretend we're "stabilizing" regions and "protecting" freedom and bringing "democracy," when really no such thing is happening.

But how is our empire literally killing us, you ask? Well, it seems to me to be a rather circular argument--we have this economic empire in which the dollar is the world's reserve currency but we are always having to fight to protect our currency's status as the coin of the realm. I mean to say, it's circular in that, because we're an empire, the global hegemon, we have to fight to remain an empire.

If we weren't trying to be an empire, which is the antithesis of democracy and the incubator of war, we could be what we were always intended to be: a place where freedom is protected and encouraged, happiness is pursued, and the general welfare is promoted.

American Theocracy

Oh, whatever...here's a couple of relevant quotes from Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy" that got me thinking about all this:

"...the Bush administration knew that the oil-peak crisis probably posed strategic dangers far beyond those publicly acknowledged. The dollar's role as the world's reserve currency was also tied to oil. Besides which, seizing Iraq as a military base-cum-oil reservoir would allow U.S. troops to be pulled out of vulnerable Saudi Arabia, where their presence was breeding discontent and terrorism [p. 69]."

And another, in the section "Defining American Petro-Imperialism":

"...petro-imperialism--the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force--puts up a democratic facade...and seeks to secure, protect, drill, and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs. Still, the way in which the United States has begun to organize its national security and military posture around oil is...unprecedented in scope [p. 78]."

Doesn't that make perfect sense? We will fight to the death and use nuclear weapons in order to maintain our access to a finite energy source, mainly because powerful people profit. And the rest of us do the fighting and the sacrificing of our civil liberties and our livelihoods. It's a wonderful plan for the few, and an atrocity for the many.

Good night.

PENTAGON PROJECTILE VIDEO

Ummm...that's it? If anything, this newly released footage seems to prove that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon, not Flight 77. True, there is something white and vaguely phallic entering from the right in the two videos, but only the power of suggestion that it's a "plane" would make you think it's a plane. It doesn't look big enough to be a jumbo jet, if you ask me.

Alex Jones at Prison Planet seems to think (hat tip to Techno Slavery and MC Sly-G)that the release of this video is part of a Pentagon psychological operation to set up a strawman for the government to knock down. I think he might be right. So I'll say this about the Pentagon video: there's something there, but a jumbo jet? Doesn't look like one to me.


Or Was It A Plane?

But, now that I think about it, the squad car that appears to drive up the lawn after the impact gives one an idea of the scale involved. The trees on the horizon aren't obscured as much by the car as they are by the "plane"--let's call it a "projectile." But the car is not in the air and the projectile is. So that would account for more obscurity of the horizon trees.

It Doesn't Really Matter

As Alex Jones again points out, whether a plane did hit the Pentagon or not, it doesn't do any damage to the argument that 9/11 was not what the official story makes it out to be. What about the collapse due to fire of 3 concrete and steel buildings into their own footprints on the same day, which has never happened before or since?

As I write this, it seems clearer to me that Jones is right--this is a straw man intended to cause 9/11 Truth seekers to express their vindication about there being no plane at the Pentagon and then show them and the movement to be fools with future "newly released" video from better cameras and more angles.

So long story short, these new videos neither validate the official story nor invalidate the arguments of the 9/11 Truth movement.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE DATABASE

Joe Scarborough was just addressing this on his show, and I can't believe I could actually stand to sit and watch that guy for more than two seconds, but he was making perfect sense.

And the problem with the database is that it's too big. Why in heaven's name would the NSA need to collect data on 200 million Americans? Are we all suspects? The net it casts is too wide--dangerously wide.

Don't forget that this program, and as-yet-unleaked ones just like it, are NOT about stopping terrorism. They are about control of the populace. They are about blackmail--"Senator, we have the records of your phone calls to the Bunny Ranch; do we need to go public with this or are you going to see it our way." This program is about intimidation.

It's a dangerous progression (didn't want to say "slippery slope")

Big Brother is truly upon us. Don't we see? First, it's we have to check your bags coming in and out of transit stations and in and out of sporting events. Then it's you have to take your shoes off (at least) to get on a plane (if you're not on the no-fly list). Then it's you have to sign a list to buy legal drugs. Then it's you have to let your phone records be given to the government. What the hell will they want next?

We have to stop this before what's left of our civil liberties is gone. This cannot be allowed to go on. To borrow the words of Bush 41, "this must not stand."

And we shouldn't be intimidated by rhetoric like the former Bush employee spewed on Scarborough Country, i.e., "we haven't been attacked since 9/11," or "we are at war," or "this is part of the president's inherent authority, so he doesn't have to present it to Congress or anyone else."

That is how totalitarianism creeps in. And in this country, it's through creeping. Totalitarianism ain't a toddler anymore. He's in his late teens at least and he's growing up fast...

SO THE NSA IS "TROLLING" AND "MINING"...

...because Bush said they weren't.

In an AP story that I got off the wire (don't know if there's a link for it), the first sentence says this:

The White House says the domestic spying it carries out is "lawful, necessary,
and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks."

Which is how we know that the domestic spying is illegal, unnecessary, and doesn't protect Americans from terrorist attacks. I found that last part the most laughable--monitoring phone calls by American citizens (supposedly just to create a database of calling habits, not listening to conversations) has nothing to do with preventing terror attacks, because terrorist attacks are caused by antagonizing other countries. Like Iraq, for example. So they can be prevented by not doing such things. Since he took office (and especially since the Iraq invasion), Bush has been creating the perfect conditions for blowback and more terrorist attacks.

He is a madman that no one likes and is a mortal threat to the Constitution.

Have a nice day...make sure to say hello to the NSA when you call your grandmother in Slidell...

IRAN LETTER

Read the Ahmadenijad letter today...it sounded pretty reasonable to me--not the ravings of a madman. Is it an accurate translation? I would guess that it is, because it does make him sound so reasonable.

He explained Iran's grievances against the West and America in particular:

The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting, the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborates this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-à-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and collaborating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.

Now of course, Paula Zahn and Bill O'Reilly and their clones will never mention these facts to their audiences. Nor will "real newsmen"--the Brian Williams of the world. It's as though these things either didn't happen, don't matter, aren't worth talking about, or some combination of all those things.

For some reason, putting Iran's desire for nuclear power and yes, nuclear weapons in the context of their history makes no sense to the popular media--that shit doesn't get ratings, I guess. Meanwhile, they are more than happy to put everything Bush (or anyone else) does in the context of this being a "post-9/11 world." You know, because no history matters except ours and no one should be expected to remember anything about our history except 9/11, because that was just a horrible day.

And Ahmadinejad sounded like he watched "Loose Change" or something:

Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?

But my favorite stuff is on page 5 (in the pdf file linked above). My favorite stuff is page 5. Here's a sample:

The question here is “what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?”
As your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty. Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem.

And then he asks a series of rhetorical questions which can all be answered "No" as far as the Bush administration is concerned.

Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment?
Did we intend to establish justice, or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful – thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs’?
Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them?
Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them?
Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats?
Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it?
Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors?
Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns.

Say What You Will...

...about Ahmadinejad's motives for the letter--call it Machiavellian realpolitik or whatever. I'm just saying that all that aside, most of what the letter says is reasonable and rational and is perfectly consistent with the philosophy of our culture and our nation. I know you can't really divorce it from its timing (considering the fact that the Security Council is considering sanctions--but it's also the first state letter from Iran in 27 years) and other political considerations, but I guess I'm thinking what the letter will sound like 15 years from now after the invasion of Iran went horribly awry and we're just coming out of a worldwide depression caused by Iran's manipulation of oil prices and what not. I think that then, as now, the letter sounds perfectly agreeable and deserving of a swiftly courteous and considered reply from our Dear Leader.

What of the oil bourse?

It's hard to find info on the coming Iran oil bourse, but I think it's closer than ever to starting up, and (eventually) threatening dollar hegemony in the process.

Here's some links to info about it:

Oil the reason behind latest tension with Iran
Oil Into Euros?
Iran sets up euro-based oil bourse

And here's finally something from the reputable, reliable Reuters:
Iran sees oil bourse in two months

750 COLBERT LOOSE

I'm a bit late with these comments about Stephen Colbert's historic comic performance on April 29...but I've been sick and trying to get to bed early...

I don't see how anyone who doesn't work either a)for the Bush administration or b)for the media couldn't see the sheer, exhilirating hilarity of Colbert's performance. I say it goes down in history as one of the baddest-ass, ballsiest, most fearless, dead-on, deadly, acidic, satiric, and oh yeah--funniest comic bits in the world.

Forget Carlin and Bruce and Hicks and Kaufman--they're all brilliant and legendary. But this Colbert--magnifico! Right in their faces! Right under their noses! Many a truth spoken in jest!

750 Laws

All hail King George the first...or since he's a Jr...isn't he really the second...but his father wasn't a king...oh well--all hail King Dumbya! But seriously, this story about how Bush's signing statements have led him to bypass laws passed by Congress could not be more frightening. As we all know, Bush has never vetoed a single bill--it turns out that he never felt he had to because he just added signing statements to his signature that direct the rest of the executive branch to ignore the parts of bills that he thought trampled on what his interpretation of his constitutional power is.

And that's the scary part--the dictatorial part--his signing statements are based on what he thinks his constitutional power is. But if you got a even a D in a civics class in junior high, you know that that ain't how it works here in the good ol' U.S. of A. We got checks and balances...or we're supposed to. I mean...ideally, we wouldn't be a one-party government and Congress would...I don't know, hold hearings or...order investigations or something...

LOOSE CHANGE

Got word from Techno Slavery that "Loose Change" and its creator Dylan Avery are going to have a higher profile in the next few months as the movie may be shown in theaters, there may be a show about it on Spike TV or MTV or something.

I did some reading about the movie today, specifically about criticisms of the movie. Like Wikipedia itself says that some people think the fact that Wikipedia is used as a source in the movie is questionable because of the nature of Wikipedia.

I'm not going to argue for or against Wikipedia (I think it's accurate--and I have found that if the accuracy of an article is in question, that is stated in the Wikipedia entry), but I will argue for "Loose Change."

Here are the parts of the movie that really changed my mind about the official 9/11 story (which I never really questioned until I saw the movie):

1. The video footage from the Pentagon: There's no plane, there's nothing--just an explosion. You cannot see a plane hitting the Pentagon in the five frames of footage that were released. We know (and they know we know) more footage exists, why won't they release it?

2. The nature of the WTC buildings coming down (and the fact that they came down at all): I never knew that there were other buildings that were comparable to the WTC buildings that had been hit by planes or burned for hours on end and never fallen down. In fact, neither before nor since 9/11 has any building comparable to the WTC has ever collapsed neatly into itself (or collapsed at all) due to fire. Yet on that one day, 3 buildings came down? And you can see in the videos where what looks like detonation charges are going off before the destruction from the top gets to the lower levels.

And Building 7 is the most damning to me--Larry Silverstein is on camera saying that he decided to "pull," that is to say, "demolish with explosives" Building 7 on 9/11. The type of neat demolition that is clearly displayed with Building 7's collapse is not achieved in one day. Silverstein couldn't have watched what happened all day on September 11th, watched Building 7 burn a little bit, then call in a demolition team that afternoon to set up explosives to bring down the building.
There would've been no way to get a demolition crew out to the WTC on Sept. 11--it was chaos down there.

That necessarily means that the building was mined with explosives for a controlled demolition BEFORE Sept. 11th. Why? Who the hell knows? Maybe in case the planes missed the towers? Maybe because a lot of important records were kept in Building 7 that some powerful people would want burned to a crisp? I don't know, but it's clear that Building 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition that was obviously planned for before 9/11 and since all three buildings fell neatly into their footprints just like in a controlled demolition, it makes scary, yet reasonable sense that the twin towers were also rigged that way.

3. There was no plane in Shanksville, PA. No bodies, no plane wreckage, no nothing. The scene looked almost as if something had been planted there in that field and a story concocted to "explain" it.

I can see how people bought into the official story as I did. That day was overwhelming, and I was watching it on TV from the comfort of my living room (though I had been scheduled to go to CMJ in New York that Thursday). All day long, there was, as you would expect, a barrage of reports on TV covering this aspect or that of the events, and they all basically jumbled together.
But one overall picture emerged, that all the reports began to include, and that is that it was the work of terrorists, and more than likely it was done by Osama bin Laden.

But I had to go to work, like everyone else, and couldn't follow TV reports all day. By the end of the day and into the days that followed, I pretty much accepted the story that al Qaeda did it, and that was that. I didn't hear the reports from the Pentagon and from Shanksville in real time saying that there were no planes and little to no wreckage. I didn't see those until I watched "Loose Change."

Like I say, I accepted the official story--it sounded plausible at the time. Everyone was just so hysterical and nationalistic about it, as I recall. I read some stories about it, but nothing that questioned the official story. I wasn't a news junkie then like I am now. I pretty much thought, "I know what happened, why read a bunch of depressing stories about it?"

So when I saw "Loose Change" and its inclusion of the reports from Sept. 11 of reporters saying there was no plane and no bodies in Shanksville, I was amazed. I was kind of ashamed of myself for not paying closer attention. I had been led to believe that there was clear-cut evidence of a plane crash in a field and all that, when in fact, there never was any such evidence. That's when I realized I'd been a sucker. And it was uncomfortable to realize that, but I figured that there was no time like the present to quit being one.

And that's all I can come up with off the top of my head...I'm still a little under the weather...it's only 9:20 and I can barely keep my eyes open...

HOLY PETROLEUM--HALEY JAMMED PHONES AND RUSH GOT ARRESTED!

These things make being a liberal/progressive/Democrat/leftist all worthwhile...and just Rove's indictment can't be far behind!

Here's the Haley story in a nutshell:

WASHINGTON - A GOP telemarketing firm implicated in two criminal prosecutions involving election dirty tricks got its startup money from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, financial records show...Barbour's investment company arranged a quarter-million-dollar loan to GOP Marketplace in 2000...The loan made Barbour and his Washington business partners part owners of the company, the incorporation papers show.

By 2002, federal court records contend, GOP Marketplace president Allen Raymond and the Alexandria, Va.-based company were carrying out political dirty tricks in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

Raymond, who once worked for Barbour at the Republican National Committee, is serving a three-month prison term after pleading guilty to arranging for hundreds of hang-up calls in New Hampshire in 2002. The calls jammed Democratic phone lines that were offering people assistance in getting to polling stations in a close U.S. Senate race.

And here's the Rush story--not much info yet, but Tom DeLay taught him how to take a mugshot photo:

UNITED 93 Whitewash

And here's where you can join the fun in pointing out the obvious about the propaganda flick "United 93" (Hat tip: Techno Slavery).

BACK IN THE DAY

Doesn't this just take you back...to a better time, a cheaper time, i.e. May 2001?

Traveling by car these days will cost you more this summer-- at least $1.70 a gallon for gas. That's the average price at the pump this month, up 13 percent from just a year ago.

And this reminds us of better times...like back in June 2000 when we weren't at war and we had a popular, articulate, popular, and much less conservative president:

It isn't just the Midwest suffering from a sudden spike in gas prices. Nationwide the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas has jumped from $1.42 on May 1st, to $1.65 reported this week.

I Would Take Blow Jobs Over Bombs

And remember when all we had to be horrified about was the president engaging in oral sex, back in '98? Ah, weren't those the days?

And those days could be ours again if we just "impeach the motherfucker already" right after we turn control of the House and/or Senate to the Democrats.

Operation Incessant Lies

Is this America?

By that I mean, how can this combined with this be America? People pawning possessions to buy gas while oil executives make $150,000 dollars a day?

If that is anyone's defintion of all men being created equal, then the word "equal" has no meaning. If that is "promoting the general welfare," then that phrase is useless.

And by all sane accounts, Bush's insane, unnecessary saber-rattling against Iran is helping jowly executives while stretching the budgets of jowly (and non-jowly) non-executives literally to the breaking point.

War is a racket. Wars like the one we are waging against Iraq and like the one Bush and Co. want to wage against Iran violate not only international law, they violate American law.

This is not what America should be.

And Aravosis is right, watching all those kids sing along to Pink's "Dear Mr. President" is heartening, moving, and hopeful. Especially when they all cheer during the part about being gay (especially if you know that the studio version was recorded with the incomparable Indigo Girls).

Is Ahmadenijad A Nice Guy Or A Demon? I Report, You Decide...

Based on this quote from this story:

AFP adds from Tehran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his view Friday that only rich countries should pay the "real price" of crude oil and that poorer nations should get it more cheaply.
"We should adopt a formula and schedule to prevent the increase in oil prices from harming the weaker countries who do not have oil," he told reporters on the sidelines of an oil industry exhibition in Tehran.
"They should not be harmed, although industrial countries who have hundreds of billion of dollars should pay the real price of oil," he explained, adding that the Iranian oil and foreign ministries were studying the issue.

To me, that sounds like fair trade. Fair business practices. It's like the StickerGuy's policy for doing stickers for bands: if you're on a major label and are backed by millions of dollars, he charges you a lot more for stickers (that's what his policy used to be, anyway). If you're a self-financed, DIY, independent band, he charges you less. It's progressive pricing. And that's an attitude the corporatists and the right-wing meanies don't dig.

FINANCIAL EXPERT SAYS DIPLOMACY COULD LOWER PRICE OF OIL

So why does Bush keep saber-rattling against Iran, who won't be able to produce a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years? See who's getting hurt by his unnecessary drumbeat? You and me? See who's getting helped by his unnecessary drumbeat? The oil companies, of course

According to a guy quoted in this article, Bush has the power to bring down the price of oil and spare us all:

ABN Amro broker Lee Fader said the trigger for Monday's rally was "heightened
fear about military action" against Iran, which has said it would go ahead with
plans to enrich uranium, defying the United States, Europe and United Nations nuclear experts. Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but the West fears the country is intent on arming itself with nuclear weapons.

"If somehow this got resolved diplomatically," Fader said, "that
would definitely take a few dollars off" the price of crude oil.

But you know that ain't gonna happen...because Bush is a corporation indebted to corporations...

THE BOY WHO CRIED NUKES

There's a lot of great stuff flying through the liberal blogosphere offering talking points to those who are in a position to be sources for journalists or to appear on pundit shows.

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog is doing an outstanding job with this, and Bill Scher had good points over at the Huffington Post.

But I think the title of this blog entry might help us get our point across to the public (and to the MSM, as they need schooling on this as much if not more than "the public") as good as anything. Why? It's eminently familiar, you get the meaning right away, it's derisive without being obnoxious--it's the answer to "flip-flop." It rolls right off the tongue--"Bush is the boy who cried nukes," obviously referring to the fact that we were warned of "mushroom clouds" coming out of aluminum tubes before invading Iraq even though the CIA knew there were no nukes (see "State Of War") and sure enough, there weren't any.

I don't want to make too much of it, but I think it works, i.e.:

PUNDIT SHOW HOST: Some experts say that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in 16 days.

LIBERAL GUEST: We have to realize that Bush is "the boy who cried nukes." Look at his track record on this stuff--we now know for certain that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons but the Bush administration sure worked hard to create the impression that they did. That's what they're doing now with because Bush's popularity is dropping like a rock (no pun intended), and they need something to help them keep control of Congress in November. So people should remember that Bush can't be trusted--he's "the boy who cried nukes."

And so forth.


Who Will Talk About These Points?

As I said, I really appreciate the talking points from Aravosis and Scher, but who is going to use them? Will Harry Reid or Ted Kennedy? Howard Dean is very likely to, I'm guessing. But our problem is that the Democrats don't get their act together on this kind of thing very often. We need our guys and gals on every pundit show every day of the week all saying one simple, catch-all explanatory phrase
like "Bush is the boy who cried nukes--we took his word on Iraq and you see what a mess that's become--why would we do it all over again with Iran? We've got ten years to deal with this according to Bush's own NIE."

An Aside

Truthfully, this entire assumption that we can tell other countries whether or not they can or cannot have nuclear weapons is irksome, us being the only country that's ever used them in war, whether blatantly like in Japan or more stealthily, with depleted uranium.

It's morally repugnant, is all. And hypocritical.


Comment on HuffPo and AmBlog

I wanted to spread this idea, so I posted the following in the comments at HuffPo and AmBlog:

"Bush is the boy who cried nukes"

If every liberal or Democratic pundit would repeat that pithy phrase, or any other pithy, sort of juvenile phrase that gets our point across about why Bush can't be trusted with "intelligence" at this point, I think that'd be useful. And unfortunately probably more effective than earnest recitations of the facts.

Because it takes a pithy, juvenile phrase to reach the public, and also, apparently, the mainstream media--the MSM loves that kind of snarky, junior-high taunting shit, i.e., "flip-flop."

Just a suggestion...

WHAT'S THAT DELICIOUS AROMA?...IS SOMEONE COOKING UP AN IMPEACHMENT? YUM!! Here's the recipe...

Holy shit--have you seen this story? Yet another tale of Bush touting Iraq rationales that he was told were false before they left his mouth! Check it:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Sprinkle in a buttload of that with a smattering of this:

Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews...Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

And then throw in John Conyers' report, along with a heaping, bitter helping of this:

American Military Casualties in Iraq

Since war began (3/19/03): 2359
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03) 2222
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 1892
Since Handover (6/29/04): 1493
Since Election (1/31/05): 923

Total Wounded: 17269 (with estimates from 18000 - 48100, if you count DU, etc.)

And if you like you can spice it up with this:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

And it won't hurt to add a dollop of this:

The lawyer representing the Republican National Committee told a New Hampshire TV station that the White House was investigated in a 2002 plot by Republican operatives to disrupt get out the vote efforts in a Senate race where John Sununu was ultimately elected New Hampshire's Republican senator.

Today, at the New Hampshire civil suit motions hearing on the phone-jamming case, Robert Kelner, the Washington lawyer representing the RNC, noted that the White House has already been investigated for its involvement in the case.

Oh, I can't wait to feed this to the Republicans!!!

GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN PEOPLE

Cheney booed at baseball game...Bush's poll numbers continue to drop...Majority of people think Bush's leaks were unethical...Gingrich provides cover for Democrats, says U.S. should "pull back" from Iraq...

Iran joins the nuclear club, insuring that we can't invade them.

Oh, and the oilman/CEO president continues to make sure that we get gouged at the gas pump...not that being gouged is good news, but it's good that it makes people wake up to how this adminstration is harming everyone.

Been reading "Cruel and Unusual" by Mark Crispin Miller...great book--I checked it out from the library once before but couldn't get into it. But this time, I can hardly put it down. Here's a good sample passage:

"This Age of Information has turned to be an Age of Ignorance, in some ways comparable to the so-called Dark Ages, when the priests alone knew how to read and there was nothing to plug in. We live with an unprecedented wealth of information: countless facts and solid arguments and scrupulous researches, all of it (for many of us) just a click away. And yet..there is, out there, an entire propaganda universe available to anyone who wants to obsess about one thing and from one point of view...Thus the right has made for its constituents a new designer consciousness. Having co-opted the media, the right can fill your head all day, all night, wherever you may go, as long as you're plugged in. You can watch only Fox News Channel and MSNBC, listen only to Sean Hannity et al., read only those newspapers that re-echo what you've seen and heard, hit only those Web sites that others like you also hit...all such products having been approved directly or inspired by the White House and the Republican National Committee, if not sources even farther to the right. (p. 123)"

And wait, here's another really, really good one that kind of echoes the previous one and also reiterates Chomsky's point about how if you want to know the actual truth about a political subject, you practically have to do a research project:

"And so America's minority of rightists walk around completely misinformed and yet cocksure, belligerently echoing the sophistries and fabrications that have made it through the bubble so that they themselves are also nonstop propagandists. Meanwhile, other than those plucky few who try to learn what's really happening out there, everybody else, too busy for such extra daily work, feels timid, uninformed, and therefore half-inclined to heed the ones with strong opinions, booming voices, and a lot of 'facts.' Through such a network has the right deluded millions of Americans just as effectively as any modern oligarchy or medieval faith--just as effectively, in fact, as Bush/Cheney have deceived themselves. (p. 124)"

BUSH LEAKS!! SCOOTER SINGS!!
Plus, collected thoughts from the past few days

Of course Bush approved leaks of classified info to start his dirty war. My only question is why is this just now coming out. If this was in the court papers even before the indictment came down, why is it just now Murray Waas is the new Sy Hersh, he’s more Woodward than Woodward at this point (and by that I mean the Watergate Woodward, not the Plan of Attack Woodward).

Another thing–why do stories since Libby’s indictment refer to him as “Lewis Libby” or “I. Lewis Libby” and leave out all references to “Scooter?” It seems to me that it’s a subtle ploy to confuse casual news consumers–most stories before the indictment made some mention of “Scooter Libby” and now none of them do, so casual news consumers might think that “Lewis Libby” and “Scooter Libby” are two different people. Not that it’s that big a deal, it just occurred to me...

Also, it occurred to me today that I am one of those dreaded “single-issue voters”...and my single issue is: whatever is best for the American people (as opposed to American corporations) within the confines and allowances of the Constitution.

Fascism?

And there’s been a lot of talk about fascism thrown around about Bush and the corporatocracy. Most discussions of whether or not the Bush administration is fascist tend to downplay the possibility, as though being fascist necessitates being totalitarian. This is obviously not necessarily the case–Bush is a fascist, at least according to Mussolini, who wrote that

“Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere.”

Instead of that quote, I was originally going to use this one:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power,”

but according to Wikipedia and this article, there is no written evidence that Mussolini ever said that.

But Wikipedia had another good Mussolini quote that explains why Bush and the Republicans are fascists:

"The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad... For the Fascist, everything is within the State and... neither individuals nor groups are outside the State... For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative... Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual."

So my argument is merely that Bush and the Republican party are indeed fascists, but are not totalitarian. Yet.

Rhetoric Check

Compare the first quote below, from Mussolini, with the last two, first from Vin Weber last night on Hardball, and then from Tom DeLay, on Hardball the night before last.

Mussolini

"Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State."

Weber

WEBER: Because I think that the consensus in American politics since about the 1930s on was for bigger government. There was a growing minority of Americans that didn‘t buy that consensus, but they had nobody to vote for it.

And so starting in 1964, you saw the transformation of the Republican Party, first with the Barry Goldwater candidacy and then ultimately with the election of Ronald Reagan in the 1980, from kind of a moderate or if you will business party to an ideologically conservative party that offered people an alternative to the growth of the liberal welfare state and everything that went along with it.

And that‘s how the Republicans became that parity or majority status depending on how you look at things.

DeLay

“We’ve spent the last 10 years turning around 40 years of the left’s dominance of Washington, D.C., and the federal government. And they knew as majority leader I was starting to lead us to do the things that conservatives have wanted to do all along. Get rid of the tax code. End abortion as we know it. Hold the judiciary accountable. Fight the war on terror...My constituents deserve better and they deserve a Republican, not a liberal Democrat representing them.”

Notice what is shared by the dictator and the two disgraced Republicans–a revulsion for “the left” or “liberals” or “liberalism.” If these guys are the poster children of the right, why in the world would any sane person reject the left?

And as I read through this post again just after uploading it, it struck me how Mussolini saw the 1800s as a period of oppressive liberalism, while Weber seems to indicate that everything was cool with him until the 1930s. And then DeLay kinda disses Reagan and Nixon in his history lesson, saying that it's only been since 1996 that the right has been trying to undo the last 40 years of "the left's dominance"--which takes us back to 1966. Let's see how "dominant" the left has been, just based on Presidential elections:

1. 1968: Nixon wins
2. 1972: Nixon wins
3. 1976: Carter wins
4. 1980: Reagan wins
5. 1984: Reagan wins
6. 1988: Bush I wins
7. 1992: Clinton wins
8. 1996: Clinton wins
9. 2000: Bush II wins
10. 2004: Bush II wins

So the left "dominated" by losing 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections? Thomas Frank really nailed that one--this is a perfect example of the right's "Plen-T-Plaint", i.e., their persecution/victim/martyr complex. Even though they've had more Presidents in the last 38 years and have had Congress for 12 of those years and one-party rule for going on 6 of those years, they still want to act like the left is "dominant" and that the media are "liberal"? And they get away with this ruse?

OF IMMIGRATION AND IRAN

Wall off the border? Can they be for real? Free countries have no need to be fortified by walls (and this "virtual wall" sounds like a boon for a Bush-crony security company--Stratesec, perhaps?). If they build a damn wall between us and Mexico, that will be concrete (pun intended) proof that we are not free.

Don’t forget, walls have a dual function–they may keep others out, but they can also keep you in.

What we need to do is what Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis said on the Majority Report Monday night, which is what I had been thinking. We need to stop just treating the symptoms (i.e., illegal immigration) and treat the disease itself, which is Mexico’s disastrous economy that makes immigrants need to come here in the first place. But that’s not what the corporatists want. And the corporatists tend to get what they want, which is a steady source of cheap labor–i.e., the illegals, which drives down the price of labor of workers in this country (bigger supply of labor means employers pay less for it).

But if they do build a wall, a friend of mine pointed out that there’s a good bet that there will be illegals helping to build it.

Iran and ran and ran

I can’t find out much about what’s going on with the Iran oil bourse. I thought it was supposed to have opened on March 20. But I haven’t googled it lately. I’ll do that after I get these thoughts down.

Read this piece by Joseph Cirincione about how he now thinks that war with Iran is more or less inevitable whereas he used to think it was unlikely. As I read it, it occurred to me that the Bushies have nothing to lose by attacking Iran. The “Commander-in-Crony” will be gone in 2009 and will not have to deal with any of the repercussions personally.

It’s like the Bush quote I wrote about a few days ago–when asked by Bob Woodward how he thought history would view the Iraq war, his response was that no one can know that with the implication being that it doesn’t really matter to Bush because “we’ll all be dead.” Similarly, one can imagine Bush and Rove’s feeling about Iran, a bigger deficit, or anything else they might be able to wreck before 2009 as being the same–they’ll be out of office and won’t have to deal with it, so what do they care what happens?

Their only concern is keeping, consolidating, and projecting power, regardless if it starts WW III.

Lagniappe

Check out this thread that I replied to about the Iraq war...it's not spectacular or anything, just gives some idea what we're up against...

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...