Giving up the Soul of America

Bush wages war against Iraq and loses! He wages war against America and wins. As someone said early on: let's give Iraq our Constitution. We don't have any use for it anymore.

Bush doesn't care that terrorism has gotten worse since he began the war. He doesn't care that when Ronald Reagan waged his "war on terrorism" in Lebanon, terrorism got worse. During the back-to-back Reagan/Bush debacles, there were a total of 306 acts of terrorism against US interests at home and abroad. During Clinton only 151. Those stats had been published by the Brookings Institution but are available from the FBI. [See: Terrorism in the United States Scroll down to pg 43 PDF file]

We measure Bush against FDR or Bill Clinton and find him lacking. Neocons measure him against other tyrants and find him a success. It was Pat Buchanan who spoke of the "culture war" at the GOP National Convention held in Houston in 1992. Though it was called a "hate speech" at the time, not even Buchanan could have had this in mind. What is left of Bush's support is most surely of another culture, a set of false values, a cynical Machiavellianism. It is not representative of the "America" I knew or grew up in. Could this, a conspiracy of Republicans to prop up a mean-spirited dictator, be the "culture war" that Pat Buchanan had in mind?

Bush calls his dictatorship a unitary executive.

When President Bush signed the new law, sponsored by Senator McCain, restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees, he also issued a Presidential signing statement. That statement asserted that his power as Commander-in-Chief gives him the authority to bypass the very law he had just signed.

This news came fast on the heels of Bush's shocking admission that, since 2002, he has repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant, in flagrant violation of applicable federal law.

And before that, Bush declared he had the unilateral authority to ignore the Geneva Conventions and to indefinitely detain without due process both immigrants and citizens as enemy combatants.

-The Unitary Executive: Is The Doctrine Behind the Bush Presidency Consistent with a Democratic State? Findlaw

The Bush position flies in the face of Chief Justice John Marshall's decision in Marbury v. Madison, which held that the Court is the final arbiter of what is and is not the law. Marshall famously wrote there:

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.

This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. It is not therefore to be lost sight of in the further consideration of this subject.

If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.

-Chief Justice John Marshal, MARBURY v. MADISON, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), 5 U.S. 137 (Cranch), WILLIAM MARBURY v. JAMES MADISON, Secretary of State of the United States, February Term, 1803

So many voices have been raised, so little has been done. It is fair to ask: is anyone paying attention? America! You have given up your Constitution. You have given up Due Process of Law. You have given up habeas corpus. You have given up the rule of law! If Bush is allowed to make it all up as he goes along, ruling by decree (signing statements), then you will have given up freedom itself. As William Wallace might have said: What will you do without freedom?

In its disregard for truth, public opinion, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Constitution, and statutory law, the Bush administration has been more of a regime than an administration.

- Paul Craig Roberts, Are Democrats Turning A Blind Eye to Civil Liberty?

What did you get in return for this Faustian bargain? You have given up the soul of America.

Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?

-A Man for All Seasons

How did this come to pass? Simply, Bush did it the Adolf Hitler way. The tactics were described by Hermann Goering to American psychologist, Dr. Gustav Gilbert, at Nuremberg. Goering, we can imagine, slapped his thigh, laughed, and called the whole process "easy". Even before his capture and trial, Goering was shooting off his mouth about the Reichstag Fire, a "terrorist" act exploited by Hitler to justify the seizure of dictatorial powers, the end of German democracy.

General Franz Halder, provided evidence on the Reichstag Fire at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in 1946.

At a luncheon on the birthday of Hitler in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goering interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.

After the Reichstag Fire on 27th February, 1933, Goering launched a wave of violence against members of the German Communist Party and other left-wing opponents of the regime. He also joined with Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutz Staffeinel, in setting up Germany's concentration camps.-Spartacus, Hermann Goering

You will find the same account in William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is often quipped that the difference between the Reichstag Fire and 911 is that no one died in the Reichstag fire.

The Bush strategy was originally outlined by Adolf Hitler himself:

The broad mass of the nation ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

- Adolph Hitler

Though we know it to be a big lie, Bush still links his war against Iraq with the events of 9/11. By now, I should not have to repeat the obvious. The mainstream media has apparently not made the point effectively: Bush's invasion of Iraq had nothing whatever to do with 911. Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. Iraq had nothing to do with the "war on terrorism" until after US troops showed up in Iraq. Since that time, the war in Iraq has made terrorism worse as it has made of US troops a convenient target.

These are all issues about which Bush continues to lie. The Bush regime deliberately lied to Americans about Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction". Colin Powell has since apologized for his fraudulent presentation to the United Nations.

In the meantime, the war in Iraq grinds on. Thousands more will die so that Bush might enjoy absolute rule in what had been the "land of the free". How long can the American people assuage their consciences with a sop to naivete: but we were duped!

Hopes that a Democratic majority might moderate a radical White House have faded. Bush flack Tony Snow raises the specter of "permanent bases", presumably to guard oil fields seized by the US. Bushies now talk about a permanent presence of between 30,000-40,000 troops. This premised, of coruse, upon a friendly government in Baghdad and, that in turn, implies a series of CIA sponsored coups until the US gets what it wants. Viet Nam redux.

Is that what "bringing to Democracy to Iraq" was supposed to be about? In fact, no! It is another product of the "bait and switch" White House. When nothing else done by Bush has worked for anyone but Exxon-Mobil and Halliburton, what chance has yet another crazy scheme to steal Iraqi oil and, thus prop up our inarticulate tin horn dictator in Washington?

In the meantime, the ever courageous Dennis Kucinich says that Bush's planned theft of Iraqi oil is a war crime. Kucinich is absolutely correct.

The so-called "war on terrorism" gets worse because it is lost, because Bush never defined winning, except perhaps privately to the oil barons who conspired with Dick Cheney at what was intended to be a secret meeting of the "Energy Task Force". The very idea of "permanent bases" gave the game away. Bush's war against the people of Iraq was never intended to be won. It was never intended to be anything but an Orwellian state of emergency and endless war. It was never intended to end terrorism or to bring Democracy to Iraq. It was intended to distract the American public and keep George W. Bush in the White House. Let's look at things through George W. Bush's lens. Winning the war in Iraq means we leave and, in leaving, we lose the oil fields. Alas, Bush has embarked upon a "new frontier": tyranny and dictatorship.

Some notes on our "awakening" by Bill Moyers:

And now for something completely different:

Merle haggard-today I started loving you again
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Some additional resources:

• excerpts:William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• The Avalon Project, Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
• Supreme Court Cases Citing Marbury v Madison
  
• Circuit Court Cases Citing Marbury v Madison
• Machiavellianism
• Enron: What Dick Cheney Knew

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GOP: Sick People Desparately Seeking Scapegoats

The GOP is a sick party of sick people. Nasty, mean-spirited and delusional, it blames its favorite phantom menace, liberals, for all our nation's woes though liberals have not wielded real power since the New Deal. How rational, therefore, is this perpetual, tiresome GOP jihad? Republicans may very well be "nuts" but that misstates the situation. What we are witnessing from outside America's increasingly radical, imperialist party is the ugly puss that oozes from an open sore: Republicanism, desperately seeking scapegoats.

Bush's tar baby, Iraq, has become the GOP tar baby, not easily scraped off. Thus the GOP is the party of monumental failure, a party that will most surely preside over the dissolution, the fall, the complete collapse of the "great" American empire. It is no wonder that Republicans now blame one another and the Democrats. The GOP will try to suck democrats into the quagmire. That is to be expected; it is the nature of evil that it tries to compromise its opposition. Still - a murderer bears more responsibility than those who merely fail to stop him.

Democratic regimes, moderate to a fault, have provided little relief from right wing oppression and orthodoxy that has all but killed America. The myriad of sins heaped on "liberals" and "secular humanists" by goppers is most certainly a deliberate campaign of frauds and lies -the kind we come to expect from the party of George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales[See: Senate Conservatives Refuse To Put Gonzales Under Oath], Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Jack Abramoff. But what, I want to know, is the GOP still pissed about?

Joe Klein, Who Claimed Liberals "Hate America," Now Slams Progressives' "Bile"

By MARC McDONALD

Time magazine blogger Joe Klein is upset with the way the progressive blogosphere is treating him these days. In his latest piece, "Beware the Bloggers' Bile," Klein expresses bafflement that he's been criticized by liberal bloggers recently.

Klein writes that much of the progressive blogosphere these days is "is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance."

Klein expresses dismay at his critics and tries to play up his supposedly liberal credentials. He writes that he's being unfairly targeted. As far as he's concerned, "the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered."

Wow, that's a pretty heavy charge.

There's only one problem that the supposedly reasonable and "unfairly" criticized Klein fails to point out.

The fact is, Klein himself has been guilty of the most vicious, Rush Limbaugh-like attacks on liberals in recent years.

Here's an example (as reported last year by Media Matters). On April 11, 2006, Klein declared that Democrats wouldn't find success among voters "if their message is that they hate America -- which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past 20 years."

Let me see if I understand this correctly: Klein claims liberals "hate" America. And then he turns around and claims that the progressive blogs are guilty of "intolerance" and Rush Limbaugh-like tactics because they dared to criticize him.

And what is Bill O'Reilly so pissed off about when clearly the sorry state of American society is his fault and that of Fox, the propaganda arm of the GOP and the GWB specifically:

Anger and bile pour from Bill O'Reilly's every pore. O'Reilly is mad at a world that his targets could not possibly have created or influenced except marginally. In fact, we liberals have more reason to be angry at much, much more than has O'Reilly. Delusional, paid very well to lie, Billo obliges with more lies. Typically, he blames the phantom menace for the hell of his creation.

Certainly, recent GOP vehemence is of a radical sort, substantively different from Barry Goldwater and, more recently, Pat Buchanan, who, from time to time, experiences moments of critical lucidity rare in a Republican.

PJB: Does ‘The Decider’ Decide on War?

Why does Congress not enact the resolution Nancy Pelosi pulled down, which declares that nothing in present law authorizes President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike or preventive war on Iran – and before launching any such attack, he must get prior approval from both houses of Congress?

If we are going to war, is it not imperative that, this time, we know exactly why we must go to war, what exactly the threat is from Iran, what are the likely consequences of a US attack on a third Islamic country and what are the alternatives to war?

-Pat Buchanan

All makes sense when one realizes that the GOP does not hold power legitimately. The election of 2000 was a fraud and the GOP leadership must know this. They planned it. Secondly, GOP members are not angry because liberalism failed but, rather, because it succeeded. Clinton, specifically, but every other Democrat as well will never be forgiven for proving the GOP to be wrong about almost everything.

If "liberals" and Democrats are to be faulted, it is for not having opposed the GOP more effectively, more strenuously. If you listen to the GOP, however, you would think the Democrats had actually accomplished something. I wish they had. Democrats might have been justified in shouting in the face of GOP criticism: "Bring it on!"

The nation may be as truly screwed up as the GOP thinks it is but it is only the GOP who's had a chance to do the screwing. Indeed, the nation is screwed up -by the GOP. Democrats have had neither the time nor the money to do much and, true to form, it hasn't.

The GOP meanwhile has done much --to America, not for America. The GOP stole enough votes and sold enough souls to screw both the nation and the world. And to our everlasting chagrin they have succeeded but not admirably.

The responsibility for the fall of the American empire and its imminent financial collapse must be laid at the feet of George W. Bush and a record of over twenty years of incompetence [See: Time Archives], frauds, and just downright mean-spirited evil! I'm talkin' GOP! I'm talking about the gang of crooks who screwed us, the nation, and now the world.

As the race for the White House heats up, the many failures of the Bush coup d'etat are manifest. GOP candidates will naturally try to distance themselves from the failed emperor even as they try to tar the opposition with an old canard - "liberal". There is little else in their bag of tricks save another terrorist attack.

A WHILE before 11 September the American historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, suggested that despite the "absence of international checks and balances" in the modern unipolar world, the United States would not "stroll too far down the perilous highway to hubris . . . No one nation is going to be able to assume the role of world arbitrator and policeman" (1). Like many American intellectuals, he remained confident about US democracy and the rationality of decision making. And Charles William Maynes, an influential voice in US foreign policy, asserted: "America is a country with imperial capabilities but without an imperial mind" (2).

But now we must face facts: a new imperial doctrine is taking shape under George Bush. Now is reminiscent of the late 19th century, when the US began its colonial expansion into the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, the first steps to world power. Then the US was seized by great imperialist fervour. Journalists, businessmen, bankers and politicians vied to promote policies of world conquest.

-Philip S Golub, Westward the course of Empire, Le Monde Diplomatique

To be fair, American criticism of empire is not the sole province of left or right. Arguably, Pat Buchanan, remembered, primarily for his "hate speech" to the GOP National Convention in Houston in 1992, has often been as critical of American imperial ambitions as Gore Vidal who rails from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.

- Pat Buchanan, GOP National Convention Speech, Houston, 1992

For Vidal, American Empire, is but a tragic reprise of the fall of Rome. Vidal's term "national security state" denotes and sums up the oppressive nature of the Military/Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. In his Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Vidal attributes the creation of the American empire to a conspiracy between Democratic President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenburg who told Truman that he would have to scare the hell out of the American people in order to pull it off. Indeed, I cannot remember a time in which the American people have not been afraid of something -commies, black people, immigrants, drugs, porn, Russians, terrorists and most absurdly of late: Michael Moore, french fries, and the Dixie Chicks.

In the meantime, we seem almost accustomed now to a White House increasingly disconnected from reality, a new Nero, whom early Christians most certainly believed was the Anti-Christ.

Additional resources:

• America: What Went Wrong
• The Fall of the American Empire
• What Price American Empire
• Former Reagan Advisor: Bush 'bankrupted America'
• The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

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Life is a Cabaret but tomorrow belongs to Mein Fuhrer!

German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote a fable that sums up the slow death that Bush and his NEOCON partners in crime have cooked up for the American people. It goes something like this:

A man living alone answers a knock at the door. When he opens it, he sees in the doorway the powerful body, the cruel face, of The Tyrant. The Tyrant asks, “Will you submit?” The man does not reply. He steps aside. The Tyrant enters and establishes himself in the man’s house. The man serves him for years. Then The Tyrant becomes sick from food poisoning. He dies. The man wraps the body, opens the door, gets rid of the body, comes back to his house, closes the door behind him, and says, firmly, “No.”

- Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology

Submission to a tyrant takes many forms. Most people just muddle through when forced to choose: either your life or your soul. Few are so dramatically challenged. Most of us live our lives in the grayish hinterland of compromise. Most of us seek and find, for awhile anyway, safety in the no man's land of "no affirmation" and "no denial".

But that is not the stuff of high existentialist drama. Poets and playwrights, rather, find in tyranny the seeds of personal crisis. In this crucible is sometimes born a hero's death ala Sir Thomas More as portrayed in "A Man for All Season". Submission is not a choice, though some may think so. But neither is living when life becomes but slow death from a thousand cuts. If not the body, the soul is bled to die quickly or slowly, but like ashes, it simply melts away in gray rain.

Here's the official description of tyranny:

A tyrant is a single ruler holding vast, if not absolute power through a state or in an organization. The term carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which they govern or control. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny. Many individual rulers or government officials get accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy.

- Tyranny

That description applies to many tyrannies including that of Adolf Hitler and, more recently, George W. Bush.

As we are told, life is a cabaret but never more poignantly, tragically than in times of repression, times in which your life is thought by power to be expendable in service to some higher, ideological ideal. German cabaret, for example, blossomed in post-war Germany just as a young Adolf Hitler exploited the angst that birthed cabaret. Americans' best exposure to cabaret came to us in the form of Bertolt Brecht's "Three Penny Opera"

Through a cultural filter, we absorbed the Cabaret version of I Am a Camera, a 1951 play by John Van Druten.

By the 30's Nazis had begun to repress criticism. That included journalism and popular forms of entertainment including cabaret. In 1935, Werner Finck was briefly imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp. Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide while almost all German-speaking cabaret artists fled into exile in Switzerland, Scandinavia or the US.

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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.

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"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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