Bill O'Reilly may not be a journalist...but he plays one on TV!

I believe Fox when it declares itself "fair and balanced". It balances one lie against another. That's very fair to liars and actors who wannabe journalists.

The programming executives at Fox are the real geniuses. You can bet they know how to read and spin media stats. Understanding that the funniest clowns are those who take themselves most seriously, they pulled off a master stroke: they hired Bill O'Reilly.

What a knee slapper! O'Reilly is brilliant as the pompous windbag who thinks he is a journalist. The whole thing is a modern sit-com.

O'Reilly is at his best when he shouts down his betters, the finishing touch on his loudmouth lout persona. He plays it brilliantly!

I sincerely hope that Fox is paying him what he is really worth.

Let's look at some specific episodes of this sitcom cum news show. In this episode O'Reilly thinks he has duped Keith Olbermannn into skewering him on "truly evil" people.

Don't worry, Keith. It's all an act. Think about it. No one could possibly be as obnoxious as the "Bill O'Reilly" character that "Bill O'Reilly" plays on TV.

The next episode might have been described in TV guide as "Our O'Reilly is so inflated, it's coming out of his ears and possibly his pompous ass".

NEWSFLASH: THIS JUST IN. INTELLIGENT LIFE HAS BEEN DISCOVERED AT FOX!

In the next episode, Olbermann raises a possibility that our favorite lout sounds drunk on the air! An episode sure to make the 25th Anniversary special with a special guest appearance of Krusty, the Clown.

In an episode called "Bill O'Reilly gets crazy", Bill really does "get crazy". Irony can't top a crazy guy playing the part of a crazy guy.

The fact is the US war against Iraq is a war crime, a violation each of several Nuremberg Principles. It also violates US CODE: Title 18,2441. War crimes, a capital crime.

Here's an update from The World Can't Wait organization:

The Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.

There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.

-The World Can't Wait

Let's hope Bill continues to yell at folk and interupt them. He discredits himself with his tactics and provides the rest of us with a few laughs. We haven't seen this kind of comedy since TV's so-called "Golden Age". I haven't heard so much yelling since Ralph Kramden told Trixie: "Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!"

At last, stop taking Bill O'Reilly seriously. Watch it for the yuks! O'Reilly couldn't possibly take himself seriously. He's a clown. It's an act. He's destined for the Clown Hall of Fame.

As Buzzflash pointed out, "Ronald Reagan taught the GOP what a B-actor can do for playing the part of a candidate and then acting the role of president for 8 years...Thompson may have been a senator and Republican counsel to the Watergate investigation, but his real asset to the GOP is that he's an actor."

O'Reilly, however, has outdone them all. He's a windbag playing the part of a clown playing the part of a windbag!

And, as we used to say on the news set: THIS JUST IN....

Fox Calls Barack Obama a "Terrorist"

Another update:

The Most Biased Name in News

Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt

I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."--Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01)

Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."

But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.

When it comes to Fox News Channel, conservatives don't feel the need to "work the ref." The ref is already on their side. Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.

Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt. In fact, wrapping itself in slogans like "Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network. So far, Fox's strategy of aggressive denial has worked surprisingly well; faced with its unblinking refusal to admit any conservative tilt at all, some commentators have simply acquiesced to the network's own self-assessment. FAIR has decided to take a closer look.

"Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment."

--Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 3/23/01)

Another update:

Fox News covers Iraq war the least.

A new Project for Excellence in Journalism study finds that of the three major cable news networks, Fox News has given lowest percentage of coverage of the Iraq war. It has also devoted twice as much time to the Anna Nicole Smith story as have MSNBC and CNN.

The Existentialist Cowboy

Fox
Bill O'Reilly
GOP
Politics

"Good-bye America": How the GOP Subverted American Ideals & Values

Cindy Sheehan has packed it up, giving up her valient struggle because America is no longer the country she grew up in and loved. Who can blame her? America is no longer the country I knew and grew up in. I loathe the values the GOP would ram down our throats. I am right. The GOP is dead wrong.

Good-bye America... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it.

- Cindy Sheehan

I hear that all the time these days. This is not America. This is not the America I knew. What ever happened to Free Speech? What the hell happened to this country? Dude, Where's My Country?

When one begins an article like this it is most often done with a qualification that the intent of the article is not to cast blame or to point an accusatory finger. Well, that's not the case this time around. I know who fucked up America and if I should fail to point an accusatory finger I will not have done my job.

The American right wing in cahoots with the big corporations have bent America over and screwed her silly. This pack of liars and crooks partnered with Ronald Reagan to outsource the very soul of this country.

They waged war on all working Americans and small business.

They conspired to create a corporate, fascist state.

They conspired to destroy the labor movement.

They divided the nation into haves and have nots.

They stole the American air waves and gave it to the likes of Clear Channel, FOX, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

They divided the nation along religious lines, rewarding fundamentalism with your tax dollars.

They built up an empire and called it a "war on terrorism" but, in fact, they made terrorism worse [See: Of Schadenfreude, Götterdämmerung and Bush's gestalt of failure, war crimes, and treason!]. In fact, the "war on terrorism" is a bloody fraud, terrorism is worse and former friends and allies now despise us.

They outsourced your job!

They devalued the dollar.

They created an America propped up by a world which cannot afford not to prop up the US economy.

They have proven that they care nothing about global warming, and, in fact, deny science, reason and free enquiry.

They destroyed, perhaps forever, the integrity of the electoral process.

The effects are not only economic, though I have written reams about how Reagan's policies ushered in the present era characterized by obscene disparities of income. The effects are related to the deterioration of education and the mass media. In both instances, reason and science are denigrated and under attack by the forces of superstition, mumbo jumbo and pernicious ideology.

That Ronald Reagan's economic program was called "voodoo economics" was ominous. His was the first "voodoo" administration, characterized by meaningless, feel-good platitudes, nonsense, lies, religious ideology and perhaps real voodoo for all the good done by Reagan. Many, indeed, felt cursed.

It was all GOP code words and consultant crafted jargon. Some thirty percent of the population didn't care if Reagan was telling the truth. Important for them was the fact that whatever he puked up made them feel good about themselves.

Ronald Reagan elevated stupidity and inarticulateness to hero worship status. He would not be equalled or surpassed until George W. Bush arrived on the national stage. It was not only Democrats who suffered in this new dark age. It was also articulate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and John Anderson. There was no place for them in the new GOP. There was no place for intelligence in medieval America. There was no place for enlightenment amid American Gothic. There was no place for debate when brute force and stolen elections guarantee a win.

George W. Bush took up where Reagan left off - elevating the cult of the stupid, blazing new trails for inarticulateness, making a half-baked omelet of scrambled thought processes. On numerous occassions, he has asked the media:

"... who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm a commander guy." --George W. Bush, who apparently is no longer "The Decider," Washington, DC, May 2, 2007 (Watch video clip)

Evelyn Pringle, writing for Buzzflash, counters:

This country is now paying a heavy price for Bush's lack of military experience, and his taunting invitation of "bring it on," that has resulted in a never ending stream of challengers traveling to Iraq to teach our loudmouth president a lesson.

- Evelyn Pringle, What Military Service Qualifies Bush To Lead Iraq War? Buzzflash

I believe Cindy Sheehan's plaintive adieu to be symptomatic of a new American malaise, the palpable sense of despair and helplessness felt by all Americans as their beloved America, an ideal of Democracy, slips inexorably into a black hole of right wing lies and malevolence.

Fears of another, deliberate middle east war are very real and justified, given the rogue nature of an illegitimate regime in America. The implications of a protracted and ever widening Middle East war, spreading from Afghanistan and Iraq to include Iran are just too terrible and disastrous to contemplate.

It may be too late to halt the inexorable march to war. Bush has most probably taken the US past the event horizon. A descent into oblivion may be unstoppable.

Generally, the term "Dark Ages" is used to denote a period of time beginning in 476 AD, the date on which the barbarian Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. The "Dark Ages" were a period of religious struggle. Protestants are more inclined to use the term "Dark Ages", while Catholic writers tend to characterize the era as harmonious and productive. It is fair to say that Bush's last redoubt of popular support will be found among radical fundamentalists who share Bush's extremist visions of the apocalypse. An apocalypse of his devising!

The Dark Ages were times of great religious struggle and extensive Muslim conquests. It is easy to imagine the West's current antipathy toward Islam having its origins in a dark age in which Muslim and nomadic warriors rode through the ruins of fallen empire, perhaps laying waste to farms and villages. It must be remembered, however, that by the time of the crusades, many Muslims and Christians lived peaceably side by side from Constantinople to the Red Sea.

One has nightmares about America's descent into darkness and self-created hell. It is a dark vortex threatening to suck up ala Stephen King's Langoliers the world we knew. Like all big media productions, it has a soundtrack: H. Ross Perot's giant suckiing sound down south and a goofy little ditty performed by George W. Bush -an absurd buck and wing with a bit of his own stupid doggerel thrown in for the surrealistic effect.

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty>
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

A video update and another reason not to believe Bush's official "theory" about how the towers of the WTC fell:

The Existentialist Cowboy

American Empire
Bush
War Crimes
Bush
GOP
Perpetual War
Treason
Media Consolidation
Reagan

When the GOP Changes the Subject, "...the implications are deadly for the people of the United States"

The GOP never wins a debate. It just changes the subject. Right wing consultants call this "re-framing".

Specifically, Democrats who had been in a position to take the offensive found themselves defending "funding cuts" when the GOP should have been defending an immoral war of aggression. The GOP had merely to characterize Democratic efforts as a Democratic failure to "support the troop" and the Democrats go from offense to defense.

As Glenn Greenwald argued in Salon, "cutting off funding" never meant US soldiers would suddenly find themselves without guns, ammo or food. Congress would have done what it usually does. The leadership would have worked to determine a date for a safe withdrawal and fund the war through that date. The GOP changed the subject, misrepresented the Democratic position and went on offense.

Democrats have no excuse. They should have caught on by now. Once again, they allowed the GOP to re-position them and change the parameters of debate. It was no longer about ending the war, opposed by some 70 percent of the US voting public. It became about "withdrawing support for the troops", opposed by almost as many.

The new premise was simply not true. The GOP had done it again - and again gotten away with it. Another GOP myth goes mainstream. Why is this allowed to happen repeatedly? Are Democrats not aware that the GOP hires highly paid consultants whose job it is to lie and make it sound like truth? The tactics were spelled out long ago by Joseph Goebbels and more recently by Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", an activists handbook written originally for a left leaning audience.

Democrats should be on offense. They should attack GOP lies and crimes. Democrats have probably never had a better opportunity to seize the initiative. Typically, they appear to have blown it again -- the result is that the US is stuck in Iraq where troops are NOT supported. They are targeted.

The Democrats should hammer home the point that Bush's position in Iraq is immoral and un-American even as the war bankrupts the nation. Democrats should ridicule Bush's ludicrous defense of the war. For example, at a White House Rose Garden news conference of May 24, 2007, Bush got away with making contradictory statements. First, he said if we leave Iraq before al Qaeda is defeated the "terrorists will follow us home". Then, he followed up with a promise already broken. He said that if the Iraqi government asks us to leave, we will. Haven't they done precisely that?

GOP propagandists depend on the gullibility of the American people and the numbing drone of a mindless MSM to get across contradictory and ludicrous statements. For example, Bin Laden is still "on the loose" because "we haven't got 'em yet".

Bush's statements are nonsensical and contradictory because they are lies. Representative Dennis Kucinich takes Bush apart on this issue. But, at the same time, he points out that 'this is a moment of truth' for the Democratic party. Kucinich claims that Bush is laying down the ground work for continuing the Iraq war throughout his term. It will take that time, presumably, to guarantee the "privatization" of Iraqi oil --an act Kucinich says is nothing less than "theft"!

A pattern of recklessness, indifference, callousness - the implications are deadly for the people of the United States.

- Representative Dennis Kucinich

The Existentialist Cowboy

Iraq
Congress
Why Conservatives Hate America
Bush

The Government of the United States is Illegitimate

The implications of a recent Democratic capitulation are not yet known and may not be felt immediately. Many are too stunned to write clearly about it. Many have tossed it off - politics as usual.

There is a new malady: Bush fatigue, characterized by the following symptoms: 1) fed up; 2) pessimism about the future of America, the free world, the world; 3) anger and frustration with a government completely uncaring (remember Katrina), out-of-control, unaccountable, unresponsive to anything or anyone but an increasingly tiny elite of corporate robber barons, militarists, and a hand-full of media moguls. In any case, John Edwards was correct. Democrats should have manned the barricades and left the consequences of veto to fall on Bush's stupid head.

In the meantime, Democrats have promised to come up with a new strategy with regard to Iraq. It is hoped, however that Democrats understand that this is not politics as usual. Bush has become a rogue President, a reckless practioner of brinkmanship over leadership, of platitudes over policy. I cannot pretend to know what was said behind closed doors. I cannot begin to fathom what Faustian pacts had been made leading up to the Democratic compromise. I cannot begin to understand the nature of Bush's strangle hold on what we thought had been a Democratically controlled Congress. I am tempted to ask: was Congress threatened? And, if so, with what? And how?

I am at a loss to explain what is most surely the weirdest, the oddest, the strangest exercise of power known to history. By rights in a normal world, a drooling idiot would be challenged to find his way out his front door. He would not be expected to rule. But to compare Bush to drooling idiots is not politically correct. It is unfair to idiots.

All theories fail to satisfy save one: the US government is no longer legitimate. For some time now, the rest of the world has known what Americans have denied to themselves. The Bush administration has betrayed the people and subverted the rule of law. It has no claim to legitimacy. The illegitimate Bush regime is the sheer exercise of raw, arrogant power hell-bent on illegitimate wars of conquest and oil. The government of the US has become Mass Murder, Inc.

This administration is guilty of the ruthless prosecution of unjust and ongoing war crimes and atrocities resulting in the horrible deaths of innocent civilians often with the unspeakable horrific use of white phosperous. The rest of the world saw clearly what Americans simply would not. It saw in the the Bush regime an arrogant, brutal, unjust and criminal junta, a militant gang of usurpers, thugs in suits.

Let the Bush apologists and fellow-travelers protest and howl. Screw 'em! They are but his complicit enablers. The truth will be told: the Bush cabal are Nazis or worse! Hitler had the good sense when all was lost to shoot himself. Who will provide Bush a new rope with instructions on its use?

A short recent history. Bush thugs stole both the election and "re-election". Goppers themselves called it a coup d'etat and so it was -characterized by felonious, violent assaults on ballot re-counters in Florida. I am not the only one still outraged by this treasonous attack.

Later, when Bush had Iraq in his cross hairs, he began a truly Hitlerian campaign of lies, smears and transparent bullshit. Many were fooled. Beyond forgiveness, however, were members of Congress - Democrat and Republican alike -who knew better yet climbed on board the gravy train. Not all were mere accessories after the fact. It is exceedingly impolite, however, to salivate publicly at the mere mention of lucrative defense contracts.

By now, Bush's case for war is known to have been a deliberately concocted fraud perpetrated upon the American people. Nothing said by Bush about 911 or about the war in Iraq has been, in any way, true. That debate is won. That case is closed. The verdict is in and Bush has been found a callous, deliberate liar. For me, the issue is: why is Bush not yet rotting in a dank cell when thousands of innocent Texans still languish in the Bush gulags down in Texas? Why have not formal charges been lodged at the International Tribunal to bring this mass murderer to trial for his crimes? Why are the rich, the powerful, the NEOCON connected still free to walk about and endanger the whole of humankind?

It has been said that never before had an act of war been so adamantly and powerfully opposed. Bush did not merely "not listen", he presided over a deliberate and well-orchestrated campaign to demonize his opposition. His targets included Cindy Sheehan, whose own sacrifice for Bush's vainglorious ambitions, were derided. Lives, careers, reputations were ruined by this sorry ass gang of crooks who daily flout the values of our founding.

It was not only the people of the US who were targeted by these Neo-nazis. It was any voice anywhere in the world which dared speak against the tyranny, which dared oppose the Bush campaign to wage aggressive war in pursuit of world domination. A warning to Bush enablers who still indulge delusions of Bush's "divinity", his supposed relationship with "the Lord". Save it for your trial on capital crimes charges. See US Codes; Section 2441. It is not God that Bush talks to. In any case, spare me an idiot's ideology. I want justice.

At last, when all is known to have been black-hearted, malicious lies, Bush is reduced to repeating a failed strategy because abandoning his crime in the commission of it will prove the case against him. The appropriation bill, it is said, was signed in blood. Therefore, more American lives are required to pull Bush's sorry fat out of the fire. The future is now and it was forged with Bush's order to attack Iraq. There was an urgency to stop the war before it began. There is greater urgency now to remove Bush from office.

To whom do we now turn to achieve this? Not the Democrats. They have made their GOP-like pact with Ol' Scratch.

There is left but one solution. Revolution! It also fitting that the inspiration as well as the philosophical basis may be found in the history of this nation's creation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

No mere string of platitudes, the "Declaration" is a "revolutionary" document. It is the irrefutable case that when governments of any type become "illegitimate" it is the right of the people to abolish and replace them by any means. Moreover, the case is made that the "Crown" had become illegitimate in terms of its own precepts, primarily English law, common law, and principles espoused by the crown itself. After having established the principles compelling the American revolution, Jefferson went on to enumerate numerous, egregious violations of those laws and principles by the Crown.

There had been hope that Democratic opposition might work within the present framework to reign in a rogue and illegitimate regime. But continued democratic sellouts will change the paradigm, perhaps forever. Until Democrats put Bush's feet to the fire, they will remain a part of the problem. Until they redeem themselves, they have become Bush's complicit enablers.

During his campaign for the White House, Bush had said that he was a "uniter, not a divider". But, as he demonized Iraq in the run up to aggressive war, he said "you are either with me, or against me". I have bad news for Bush. Either he is for the Constitution or he is against it. Time and again he has proven himself to be against it. He has proven true the charge that he considers the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper". Having flouted the very bases of legitimacy, it is time for Bush to go.

As long as the contagion was confined to Bush's illegitimate party and his illegitimate White House, impeachment, the only remedy short of revolution, might have been a viable solution. Now the contagion is no longer confined. The Democrats are equally complicit in the commission of Bush's capital crimes. What other recourse is there when Congress proves itself complicit in the crimes of the executive?

Bush has left in his wake a broken and illegitimate government. The people are left no choice but a substantive redress of serious and fundamental grievances having to do with the very legitimacy of every government institution. Is there nothing left America but revolution?

An update from an American serviceman at an American military cemetary in Europe:

Well, I was a generationally removed GI in Europe, and it was Memorial Day. I wonder what these poor bastards would think if they were here today and could check out this little video from Take Back The Media: what do you suppose would cross their minds if they were to discover that a descendant of Nazi sympathizers and war profiteers is now the de facto dictator of the nation that they served in the titanic struggle to destroy the Nazis? Would that be seen as cruelly ironic, maybe, or as a sick joke, or what?

About the only conclusion I can draw, on this Memorial Day, is that the Nazis actually won the war after all.

- Barstool Chronicles

Additionnal resources:

• Will Cheney and Bush Ever be Held Accountable?
• This Government is Illegitimate
• Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush
• Beyond the Limits of Free Government - How Great Britain Drove Us to Independence
• Movement to impeach George W. Bush
• Impeach Bush
• Illegitimate Government
• Patriot Act: Global Connections
• American Police State
• The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
• Saudi King Slams ‘Illegitimate Occupation’ of Iraq
• Why Declare Independence

The Existentialist Cowboy

Iraq
Congress
Democrats
Bush

Palast: Three Million Voters Challenged in Karl Rove's Fraudulent Scheme

An endemically crooked GOP regime is already planning the theft of the next election. This is a hard story to cover simply because there are so many headlines to choose from. Which one is the lead? You choose:

White House and Justice department officials conspire to cover up the role played by Karl Rove in the spreading US Attorney firing scandal

or

E-mails indicate Karl Rove is up to his neck in the White House firing of US attorneys

and the headline for this article:

Karl Rove's fraudulent scheme targets the voting rights of three million American voters

Investigative reporter Greg Palast is breaking this story this weekend, most prominently in this interview with Democracy now:

A brilliant reporter, Palast nevertheless benefited from a mistake that, with any luck at all, might bring this criminal White House down. From Les Enrages, we learn that 500 of some 5 million emails were delivered to Greg Palast by mistake. Intended for RNC.org they wound up in Palast's hands at RNC.com.

An act of "God" or the Smoking Gun? Will the mainstream media redeem itself by covering a story that promises to address the endemic crookedness of the White House itself? Sadly, the Democrats, are compromised with regard to Iraq, by rights their issue. Will they blow it with regard to the US Attorney firing scandal as well?

A jaded, tired, exploited populace would like to know: why does this story matter and why should we pay attention when nothing else has stuck? Who is not jaundiced when Bush has in fact gotten away - so far - with the commission of capital crimes?

There is a larger but related story. Unfortunately, the media has not excelled in covering "larger" stories. In this case, the deliberate, orchestrated firings of US attorneys are integral to this administration's enthusiastic attempts to subvert the rule of law in order to promote an extremist right wing agenda. This charge is made persuasively by Charles Tiefer, former solicitor of the House of Representatives. If true, it amounts to high treason, no less so than the criminal nature of Bush's prosecution of an ongoing war crime: Iraq!

Those benefiting from Bush's often criminal policies include war profiteers like Blackwater and Halliburton, religious zealots and ideologues intent upon establishing an anti-American, religious theocracy and other extremist organizations who oppose many of the rights guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights. That's why I call Bush's policies in this regard "treasonous". Differing on policy is one thing. Conspiring with subversives, as Bush has done, is another. It is subversive to engage in activity which is in itself illegal with the end view being the absolute destruction of the US Constitution.

A final word of advice for Democrats: you can still redeem your party but only if, for once, you forget the advice of corrupt consultants and stupid focus group talking points. Instead - do what IS right! That is, oppose the utter criminality of this destructive administration with every means necessary and legal. Bring the Congress to a halt if need be. Revolutionary times demand revolutionary action. End this war and end the stranglehold Bush has on democracy!

Additional resources:

• Either Gonzales Is Lying Or More Spying Programs Exist
• How the World Can Help Americans Halt Bush Administration War Crimes
• How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes
• The Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality And the American Way
• How We Can Take America Back from the Right
• Timeline of US Attorney Scandal

The Existentialist Cowboy

Gonzales
Firing Scandal
Corruption
Republican Party
Treason

The Screwing Over of the American People!

Et tu, Democratus?

It had been Bush's war. But with a little help from the Democratic leadership, Bush seems to have scraped off his nasty tar baby. What did the Democrats get for having sold their souls? A little salted pork! Bush is not grateful. He gloats. He prepares his triumphal procession to the forum.

It has come to this because the American people will insist upon being led around by the nose. The country is run by liars, focus group experts and crooks. But this latest outrage is different! This is venal betrayal! This is a Faustian pact!

Clearly, times are weird when one finds himself in agreement with Pat Buchanan who wrote:

Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out.

...

Yet, today, there are more US troops in Iraq than when the Democrats won. More are on the way. And with the surge and retention of troops in Iraq beyond normal tours, there should be a record number of US troops in country by year's end.

- Pat Buchanan

What can be said of a party pissing away its only advantage? What can be said of politicians so utterly corrupt that they cannot, will not say no to mass murder?

The elections that gave Democrats a majority clearly demonstrated a dramatic, collapsing support for continuing the war. It boggles the mind! Overnight, 70 percent or more of the US electorate who had opposed continuing the US aggression in Iraq are entirely disenfranchised.

Buchanan charges that Democrats lack the courage of their convictions. But that sounds disingenuous in the GOP, a party more at home with talking points than convictions. Alas - convictions no longer matter. The entire body politic is rotten, corrupt, bought and paid for by lobbyists - their clients and partners in the Military/Industrial complex. Democrats in congress are, likewise, recipients of AIPAC, oil industry, and military-security complex payoffs but, apparently, they get less than Republcians.

I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

- Rick, Casablanca

Democrats celebrated too early, believing that their antiwar base has nowhere else to go. To call that mere cynicism is too generous. It's treachery of a truly Bush kind.

Having succeeded in corrupting the opposition, the Bush tyranny will escape a popular uprising that it so richly deserves. At this point, however, what IS the point? As the Who declared: the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Not so long ago a Democratic victory over Bush might not have been a utopian ideal but it was infinitely better than the hells and sewers into which Bush has dragged the nation and the world.

Among the fallout is a sobering thought: impeachment now is all but impossible. Bush might have been impeached on the Iraq issue alone. Forget about it now. The Democrats have conceded the moral high ground for a low road to hell.

The Existentialist Cowboy

American Empire
Bush
War Crimes
Perpetual War
Treason

America's "Indebted Prosperity"

The US is kept afloat not because our economy is strong but because it is not. The US may be thought of as an empire but only because the rest of the world cannot afford not to keep us afloat.

The relationship between the dollar and the yen has been affected primarily by the adverse trade balance that we have with Japan. At the last summit meeting in London, for instance, we discussed the very high positive trade balance that Japan enjoyed then. The goal established by your own leaders was that this trade balance would be reduced. Instead, it's continued to go up.

I think, as the economic market leaders have recognized, the high export of Japanese goods and the relatively low imports into Japan of other goods, the yen has strengthened in comparison to other currencies, including, of course, the American dollar.

- President Jimmy Carter, Interview with Western European and Japanese Reporters, July 11th, 1978

In the meantime, the dollar continues to lose ground against stronger currencies and fundamentally stronger economies. I remember reading recently that our dollar is worth about 4 cents on a dollar of 1895. If I am wrong about that, I am sure someone will correct me.

Most recently, my good friend, Matthew Stevenson, contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, wrote both an explanation and a history of our "indebted prosperity" while reviewing a new book [The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar] for the Texas Observer. Matthew's terrific review is an essential but often ignored American History.

Matthew starts by asking you to imagine a new, sponsored Constitutional Convention. I immediately imagined electronic, animated billboards arranged around the revered meeting hall in Philadelphia. The result is the "auctioning off" of the office of President of the United States, an eventuality emobodied in Mussolini's term: corporatism.

Something similar occurred on March 28th, 193 AD, when the Praetorian guards, literally, sold the Roman empire to the wealthy senator Didius Julianus for the bargain price of 6250 drachmas. I haven't tried to buy drachmas (lately) but it sounds like a bargain compared to the absurdly high prices that are paid by US corporations for control of the US Presidency, indeed, the US government. Our modern day "Didius" has fared better than Julianus.

A magnificent feast was prepared by his order, and he amused himself until a very late hour, with dice, and the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness, solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous predecessor, and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire, which had not been acquired by merit, but purchased by money.

- Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; See also: Edward Gibbon: General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West

An important point must be made here. Gibbon reports that Julianus paid for the Roman Empire in "drachmas". "Drachmas" denotes Greek currency. At that time, the basic unit of currency in Ancient Rome was a bronze coin called an as or aes. A sestertius, another bronze coin, was worth four asses. A silver coin, the denarius, was worth 16 asses. [I will not go there!]

If Gibbon is correct, it is an indication that Rome, by that time in decline, had suffered a catastrophic devaluation of its coinage. Even now "real" money is considered by some to be "gold" if anything at all has intrinsic value. That Didius Julianus would pay in Greek currency, not Roman, indicates to me that the smart money had already dumped the as, the asses, and the sestertius for drachmas. At last, bronze would seem to have little intrinsic value as "real" money unless you had enough of it to melt down for public statuary. I would wager that only very wealthy Roman aristocracy possessed denarius, which they might have held against the complete collapse of bronze coins.

Here's where everything begins to hit us where we live. Gibbon is remembered not only because he wrote a comprehensive nine volume history of the Roman Empire, he ventured a thesis: the Roman Empire, he claims, fell to barbarian invasions because of "a loss of civic virtue". The citizenry had become lazy. The empire had taken up the habit of "outsourcing" to barbarian mercenaries the more odious jobs, primarily the defense of the empire itself. By the time the Emperor Valens faced the "barbarians" at Adrianople, it is probably true that none of his some 40,000 legionaries were, properly, citizens of Rome. They were, perhaps, the 379 AD version of Blackwater, composed largely of Syrians and "barbarian" troops from Gaul. [I can't resist a trivia diversion. Gibbon, who devoted his life to his history of Rome, left London to complete his work in a less hectic environment: Lausanne on Lac Leman, otherwise known as Lake Geneva.]

Confident of his victory, Valens committed his force of barbarian mercenaries to battle but hadn't counted on the arrival of the barbarian cavalry. The Roman empire did not fall that day. But it would never regain its military dominance. Alas, among the lessons of history is the fact that no one ever learns the lessons of history.

Like many another, I have fallen into the trap of making analogies between the US and the Roman Empire. Who can resist? My good friend Matthew Stevenson, however, is much better at sticking to the point. His article is more than just a quick look at a perilous situation, it is a succinct history of our nation's "financial" founding. Many of us recall long lectures about the Constitutional Convention. But how many recall more than a cursory mention that Alexander Hamilton favored the creation of a National Bank and Jefferson, an agrarian visionary, did not? If you have time for only one "financial history" of the US, I recommend Stevenson in the Texas Observer. Where else will be found the connection between Hamilton's vision for America and our current Asian debt?

At almost every level, what is sustaining the U.S. economic miracle is Hamilton’s beloved debt. The federal government balances its books with paper laid off to Asian bondholders under the Faustian bargain that they buy our securities and
we buy their exports. Domestically, the lender of last resort is not the Fed, but the U.S. consumer, sadly as innocent about speculators as Abraham Lincoln.

- Matthew Stevenson, The Best Government Money Can Buy, The Texas Observer

Exploding budget deficits had their beginning with what is correctly called the "parlous economic stewardship of Ronald Reagan". Reagan cut the marginal tax rate for the very wealthy from 70% to 38% amid raised expectations that wealth would "trickle down". It didn't. The many presentations by Dr. Daniel Weinberger at the Census Bureau make the convincing case that the reverse occurred. Wealth did not trickle down. It flowed up!

Reagan's promises of an "orgy of investment" that would drive the economy to new heights failed to materialize for all but about one to five percent of the population. As even his Budget Director, David Stockman, would later admit amid his public recantations [See: Atlantic Monthly, The Education of David Stockman], “supply side economics” produced the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression.

Bush pushed through Congress a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts. Like Ronald Reagan, Bush has waged a "war on terrorism" during which acts of terrorism increased. The final numbers have not yet been tallied for Bush. Again, like Reagan, the result is that after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit ballooned.

The phrase "debtors death spiral" is used to denote what happens when borrowers have to borrow to cover just the interest on previous loans. When new debt compounds old ones, bankruptcy is just around the corner. Many writers have speculated that the US has already entered such a spiral. What keeps us afloat? A "Carvellian" quick response is simply: the rest of the world which cannot afford an American black hole.

Will the American economy blink out in a big bang or Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound"? Whether a bang or a whimper, Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon, may have summed it up: “Things that can’t go on forever, don’t.”

In the last six years, to pump liquidity into the market, the government has not only run record deficits but laid off further indebtedness on its citizens, who have been forced to borrow against the equity in their houses just to pay for college. Mortgage debt is now almost $11 trillion, up from $6 trillion in 2001. More than half of this debt floats with interest rates, leaving borrowers exposed to a credit squeeze. The same is true of consumer credit, which in the last 10 years has increased from $1.1 trillion to $2.4 trillion. (Popular T-shirt: “I can’t be overdrawn. I still have more checks.”) No wonder candidates for president are judged as collection agents.

So long as the carousel of indebted prosperity keeps turning, consumers can buy a new car every few years, and the executives of major investment banks can pay themselves salaries and bonuses that routinely exceed $15 million annually. The winners from this great wheel of fortune are the financial intermediaries—banks, investment houses, hedge funds, and stockjobbers—that issue credit cards, securities mortgages, collect monthly payments, package bonds to pension funds, and process payments at the mall. (As Mark Hanna crowed when William McKinley was elected: “God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.”) When the merry-go-round stops, the well paid executives will have retired to Boca Raton, but citizens will be left holding IOU bags that put their houses financially underwater and their government hocked to the Chinese. At that point, leasing the country to Hamilton’s speculators will not look like much of a deal.

-Matthew Stevenson, The Texas Observer, Matthew Stevenson is a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. His books are available at Odysseus Books .

At this point, it is impossible to talk about how the US continues to finance its spiraling deficit without some consideration of the billions wasted in the pursuit of phantoms, delusions, and outright lies. Here's a pertinent presentation by Congressman Henry Waxman of Santa Monica, CA:

Qui Bono? An answer:

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Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Carl Sagan left us a precious legacy. The Cosmos. And also a poignant reminder of the fragility of our own "pale blue dot", the fleeting ephemeral nature of all that is beautiful and worthwhile.

When Carl, if I may be so familiar, warned us about greenhouse effects and global warming, we listened. And not just because the beautiful Pachelbel's canon in D major played so persistently beautiful in the soundtrack. Sagan illuminated our world all too briefly and briefer still when measured against the cosmological eons about which he spoke so movingly.

We could do far worse than "getting caught up" in his vision. In retrospect, it seems mundane to say that he made of science an adventure. Rather, he made of evolution a symphony, of astronomy a sonnet. With his signature phrase "billions and billions", Sagan evoked for me my own childhood amid the vast expanses of West Texas where one could look up into a velvety black sky far from city lights where "God" had flung "billions and billions" of sparkling diamonds.

It is because the air is so crystal clear and so far removed from city lights that UT's famous McDonald Observatiory (pictured above) is located in the Davis Mountains near Fort Davis, just north of Big Bend. The Milky Way, our own spiral galaxy, is not cloud-like at night. It is as if Carl Sagan's "billions and billions" of stars could be seen individually in one panoramic sweep from Guadeloupe Peak to Santa Helena. It is no cliche that the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. Science was no longer study, it was the merging of one's own life and being with a cosmos vaster than could be imagined. That is my childhood recollection of our own cosmos. It is also Carl's legacy.

Watch and enjoy.

Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan's phrase "Pale Blue Dot" is now a part of the language. Not just a handy description of a tiny planet in a vast cosmos, it has changed the way we think about our precious and fragile vessel - Earth.

Obviously, Ted Turner's questions were posed before George W. Bush would attack and invade Iraq, perhaps destablizing a volatile Middle East in the process. Sagan referenced Mikhail Gorbachev. Surely it is remembered that it was Gorbachev who put total nuclear disarmament on the table at Reykjavik. It was Ronald Reagan who blinked. It is the Ronald Reagan legacy that George W. Bush keeps alive at our peril. Clearly, the most powerful people on earth had not listened to Sagan. And they are not listening now.

The following excerpts are Carl at his best - debunking superstition even as he celebrates the precious fragility of the home planet.

That's here, that's home, that's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives ... lived there on a node of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

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Choreographed Victory, Dishonorable War

Americans must go abroad to learn the truth about America, about Bush's war of aggression against Iraq, about the nature of a failed and illegitimate regime. The truth is rarely spoken in the American media if at all. The truth is Bush's tar baby war is lost.

Bush still talks of winning, a tactic designed to divide his opposition into cheerleaders for war or "defeatists" should they fail to climb on board the Bush war and propaganda machine. It's a despicable tactic and only a failed party or a failed regime would resort to it.

The litmus test is al Qaeda. The fact that al Qaeda has become active in Iraq but only after the US attack and invasion is evidence of the US de facto loss. Violence has begotten violence. "Terrorists" have been made stronger. Al Qaeda has even penetrated the "safe" Green Zone.

There is a price to be paid for waging vainglorious war and losing. Monies blown up fighting phantoms and civilians in Baghdad is money that might have been spent improving education in a nation whose President perpetrated an Education hoax called the "Houston Miracle".

It's time to make a point about the liars at the Fox Network. According to Fox, things are just hunky dory in Iraq.

I believe Bill Moyers. I cannot believe Fox. I wouldn't bet on Native Dancer if the tip came from Fox. Fortunately, Fox can be summed up in a single word. Bullshit!

Fox credibility is typified by one Bill O'Reilly who, despite the controversy, continued to accuse American troops of the Massacre at Malmedy.

Here is what really happened as reported by an eyewitness:

On December 17th, men from Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion were ordered to move from Schevenhutte, near Aachen, to St Vith in the Ardennes. Their route took them near to the town of Malmédy.

...

Clearly outgunned by the Germans, the men from B Battery surrendered after Sternebeck's attack. Peiper himself went to the Baugnez Crossroads and brusquely ordered Sternebeck to move on. The 113 American prisoners-of-war who had survived the attack were assembled in a field near the Café Bodarwé at the crossroads - this figure included eight Americans who had already been captured by Peiper. A young Belgium boy witnessed what happened next.

At about 14.15, soldiers from the 1st SS Panzer Division opened fire on the 113 men who were in the field. The firing stopped at about 14.30. Soldiers from Peiper's unit went around the field and shot at close range anyone who seemed to be alive - or clubbed them to death as later autopsies showed. Incredibly, some prisoners did get away after feigning death. It was three of these escapees that came across Pergrin.

Colonel Pergrin had heard the attack by Sternebeck and went to investigate, first in a jeep and then on foot. Near Five Points, three Americans rushed up to Pergrin. It was these men who first alerted the Americans that something had gone on at the crossroads. Pergrin took the wounded men to Malmédy and at 16.40 contacted the First Army's headquarters to inform them that some sort of massacre had taken place at Five Points.

Because of the nature of the Battle of the Bulge, no one side could claim the land that the dead men lay in. It was only from January 14th, 1945, on that the Americans could lay claim to the area around the crossroads and claim the bodies. 71 snow-covered bodies were recovered. The freezing weather had done a lot to preserve the bodies and that made the autopsies easier, especially as some had been covered in snow.

On December 17th, 21 survivors of the massacre made statements to the American authorities in Malmédy. Their accounts were remarkably similar despite the fact that they had had little time to discuss their experiences.

When the massacre took place, Peiper had left the area around Five Points and had moved on. He was not at the scene when the shooting started. However, on December 12th, it is said that Hitler had issued an order which stated that no prisoners were to be taken and that a "wave of terror" was to descend on the Allies who stood in the way of the offensive. However, in the trial at Dachau no written evidence was produced to substantiate this and, as evidence, the court ignored it.

No one expects Bill O'Reilly to have an understanding of American and European history comparable to that of Henry Steele Commager or the great British military historian, Liddel Hart. One does expect him to keep his mouth shut when he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

It not enough for Fox to rewrite history, to simply make up news or lie about the news that it has not made up, it attacks those who don't goosestep with its every pronouncement.

O'Reilly had tried to "frame" the debate but, in fact, the war is lost. Instead of asking questions that might lead to an intelligent discussion of options, O'Reilly posed a false dilemma around the highly emotional word "win". That Fox normally gets away with such shameless and transparent tactics is an indication of just how far the America conglomerate media has devolved.

At last, terrorists and terrorism will not bring down America. It is, rather, O'Reilly who is but a symptom of the intellectual decadence that will be the end of us and our bloody oil empire.

The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.

- Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

The Existentialist Cowboy

American Empire
Bush
War Crimes
Perpetual War
Treason

Impeachment: A Legitimate Check Against Imperial Power

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Those favoring the impeachment of George W. Bush must guard against GOP efforts to frame impeachment as an illegitimate effort to usurp the government. That would be the GOP way, after all. Democrats must make the legitimate case that the founders intended impeachment to be a check against unbridled executive power. Therefore, impeachment must be pursued with all due diligence and vigor. What Jimmy Carter said about the Bush regime was, in fact, quite moderate and restrained. In fact, Bush has departed widely from American values and has committed crimes in the process. He must be impeached.

Historically, impeachment movements have reigned in "out-of-control" executive branches just as the founders had intended. Often, the mere threat of impeachment has had beneficial effects. In Bush's case, only impeachment, trial and removal will do.I will go further than Carter: Bush is a rogue "President" who believes himself above the law, above supervision by Congress, beyond the power of the courts.

Then why do Democrats appear reluctant to pursue this remedy when now more than ever, the executive has clearly repudiated basic American values?

"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

- Former President Jimmy Carter, quoted by Associated Press

Predictably - because the "President's" very legitimacy is threatened - the Bushies have activated a full court press. The code words du jour are "sad", as in, it is sad that Carter has chosen to characterize Bush's regime in terms like "worst President ever". The most compelling code word, however, is "irrelevant", as in, Carter is "irrelevant", a text book ad hominem attack typical of a party whose consultants teach this odious tactic. Clearly, if Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize were irrelevant, a failed regime would not find it necessary to so remind the world.

If there are any members of the GOP still supporting this utterly failed and criminal administration reading my blog, let me put it to you this way: the Bush administration is even worse than said by Carter. It is not merely failed, it is un-American. It has challenged and subverted the very principles of our founding. It has flouted the founders, the Constitution, the rule of law, due process of law, and the separation of powers. Impeachment is long overdue. It is not "sad" that Carter chose to speak. It is, rather, a ray of light amid a new dark age. Carter is not "irrelevant"; he is a statesman while the current occupant of the White House is a criminal awaiting impeachment, if not imprisonment for his crimes against the people of the United States, the people of Iraq, the people of the world.

In response to the attack on him by George W. Bush and the evil minions of the GOP fascist, crime syndicate, here is Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter:

Bush is worst-ever president, Carter says

FORMER PRESIDENT BLASTS DIPLOMACY, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told former Herald-Leader religion writer Frank Lockwood in an interview for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

Carter spoke while promoting his new audiobook series, Sunday Mornings in Plains, a collection of weekly Bible lessons from his hometown of Plains, Ga.

"Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man," said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. She said it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also "challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War."

Douglas Brinkley, a Tulane University presidential historian and Carter biographer, described Carter's comments as unprecedented.

"This is the most forceful denunciation President Carter has ever made about an American president," Brinkley said. "When you call somebody the worst president, that's volatile. Those are fighting words."

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I am mad as hell and I am not gonna take this anymore

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Rarely have journalists written such a succinct lead: "It's gloomy out there!". That was found in Yahoo news which cites the latest poll revealing that 75 percent of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction, if not oblivion. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am not "gloomy"! I am mad as hell and I am not gonna take it anymore. Men and women, whites and minorities are war-weary and fed up. It's a pessimism seldom shared across the demographic spectrum. It is not surprising to find women and minorities are less content than men and whites. But this time around, the nation has not been so gloomy since the end of the Bush Sr regime.

Like today, America had reason to be gloomy. The back to back administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. had left the nation polarized, divided into haves and have nots, a nation exporting jobs, a nation offering no hope to middle class working whites or minorities. Why the gloom? That's easy. The war and piss poor leadership. I want you to get mad. I want you to go your window, stick you head out! I want you to yell as loud as you can:

I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Though the Reagan-heads had promised that wealth would trickle down, it trickled up instead. It created the ruling elite. The trend continues unabated to this day save for a brief period in Bill Clinton's second term. Even a cursory perusal of the material at the Census Bureau will confirm my point. Check out the many Census Bureau breifings by Dr. Daniel Weinberg.

The rich have gotten richer. The poor have gotten much poorer. Death and sickness rates among the poor are disproportionately high and rising. The policies of the GOP, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and now, George W. Bush are to blame.

I am mad as hell about that and I am not gonna take it anymore. Nor should you. Chronic "glumness" is easily traced to the fact that the U.S.is fed up with Bush's war of aggression against the people of Iraq. Even so, because Bush's big lie machine has been so effective, it is still necessary to remind everyone. Again --go to your window, stick your head out! Yell as loudly as you can until everyone gets it:

Iraq had nothing to do with 911.It's Bush's evil war crime. He wanted it. He lied about it and threw tantrums to get it. When the public decides to throw the bums out of the office they stole, the bums will have deserved the anger, the venom, the whirlwind which they earned and will eventually reap.

The right wing likes to use the term "traitors" to describe those good people who do not subscribe to or support right wing idiocy, imperialism and dictatorial bullshit! The American people, they say, simply do not "understand that terrorists had already launched the war against them." Alas --that is not what happened. Terrorism has increased since Eisenhower and, later, Ronald Reagan's invasion of Lebanon. Terrorist acts against U.S. interests tripled during that period of time in which Ronald Reagan waged his great war on terrorism. That assertion is based upon FBI stats compiled and published by the Brookings Institution.

American and British interventionism are at the very root cause of terrorism. Since World War II, our various interventions have always lead to guerilla resistance to our meddling and unwelcome presence. That response is conveniently called "terrorism" by GOP demagogues. For whom are we "intervening"? That's easy! The answer is found in a speech by then President Dwight David Eisenhower, who, as America's number one general in World War II knew what he was talking about. The culprit, according to Ike, is the Military/Industrial complex. The MIC is STILL the culprit!

Still - it is a mistake to blame Bush for all our woes. Bush was just an idiot who had enablers, primarily the GOP itself, no longer a party but a criminal conspiracy. That party must step up to the plate and accept responsibility for having auctioned off the US to lobbies and foreign countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Don't hold your breath! The GOP way involves blaming Democrats for everything that goes wrong even when when the GOP had controlled the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. I am mad as hell about that too! And I am not gonna take it anymore.

The GOP doesn't think like normal people. Increasingly cult-like since Ronald Reagan's misrule, the GOP thinks backward. The GOP concludes first and looks for premises and/or evidence later. They resent having to do so. For example, the late Barbara Olson, on CNN, said that Democrat Gary Condit may have been guilty of murder --not because there was evidence against him but because there was none! How bright is that? If there was no evidence, she said, he must have covered it up.

Are you mad yet? You should be mad as hell and yelling about it. Go to your window right now! Stick out your head and yell: "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!"

So --for the GOP/right-wing mentality, the absence of evidence is evidence that the accused covered up the crime; and, because he covered it up, he (or she) is guilty! Bottom line: the mentality of Republicans is totally fucked up, symptomatic of psychosis and, even more obviously, psyhopathy!

There are more tangible signs of America's long, hot season of discontent. One can put a number on most of it and we can thank Michael Ventura for having done so in America by the numbers:

• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
• There is a palpable sense of despair throughout the "land of the free" as it becomes increasingly clear that Bush still insists upon imposing a dictatorship.

Bush Plans Dictatorship

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

George W. Bush uttered those very unfunny words on December 18, 2000. On that day the president-elect went to capitol hill to meet with Congressional leaders and emerged from the meeting flipping them and the American people this rhetorical bird.

The president is making good on those words and there hasn't been a peep out of Congress or the press. In a document released on May 9, 2007 entitled "National Continuity Policy," Bush makes good on his sick fantasy. In case of “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function” Bush will control the entire U.S. government, not just the federal branch.

It isn't really surprising. Bush decides who is an enemy combatant, a person without legal rights, and who should be spied upon.

If ever there was a moment for conspiracy theories, this is it. Will there be a phony terror attack, or a declaration of war against Iran? We don't know what the trigger will be but it is time to be afraid.

Actually it is time for impeachment. Bush's unpopularity makes him particularly dangerous. So does the acquiescence of the media and the silence of the Democrats. State legislatures have the right to begin the impeachment process but they have been smacked down by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

We are screwed. The phrase may be inelegant, but it says it all. Maybe we will all end up in Guantanamo. Who knows? The National Continuity Policy contains "classified continuity annexes." WTF!? As I said, we are screwed! Indeed, Bush has arrogated unto himself now the power to interpret the Constitution. I suppose he can now just dismiss the Supreme Court.

It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency

It's a sorry state of affairs. The American people must wake the f**k up and throw the bums out! The people should then follow up with adamant demands that the harm Bush has done be undone. There is otherwise no hope for America. Congressman Ron Paul, whom I have called the last honest Republican, sounds the same theme.

I am not endorsing Paul's candidacy for President. Not yet anyway. I merely present his video because he deserves to be heard. Certainly, Paul understands the many evils to be undone in what has been misnamed the "Patriot" Act. It should be re-named: The Bush Act of Treason Against America!

America must make a decision about what kind of nation it is to become. As Dizzy Dean would have put it: When you come to a fork in the road, you have to take it.

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