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:

---

---

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

---

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."

---

---

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.

---

---

How the Radical GOP Divided and Conquered America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP has divided the nation into haves and have-nots, the educated and those who cannot afford an education, super-patriots and "traitors", ins and outs, God's chosen and infidels whose lives mean nothing. By dividing this nation of the people, for the people and by the people, the GOP has literally robbed the people of its nation. The GOP has destroyed America and will soon make of it an extremist theocracy unless they are stopped.

The revolution itself began with the fall of Nixon and the resulting rise of Reagan. Clinton was reviled and hated by the teeth gnashers because he interrupted the process. The US government was, in fact, taken over by what was called the Reagan Revolution. That has turned out in retrospect to have been much more than a catchy slogan like the "New Frontier" or the "Great Society". It turned out to have been a real revolution and America still suffers for it.

We are accustomed to associating revolution with a more equitable distribution of income, levelling the playing field, improving the lot of the poor vis a vis the very, very rich. The Reagan Revolution was something else entirely. Unlike leftist revolutions, the Reagan revolution redistributed wealth upward.

Ronald Reagan stole from the poor their incomes, their benefits, their often pitiful homes. He literally gave that wealth to the upper quintile, the top 20 percent of income earners. I have the Gini Indices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prove it. [Also see: The Age of Anxiety and Inequality (scroll down] The situation kicked off by Reagonomics is so bad that even conservative voices sound liberal in denoucing this pernicious and potentially disastrous trend:

If the rich are getting richer, and the poor, if they are not getting poorer in real terms are not seeing their fortunes rise at comparable rates, this would seem to mean that the increasingly opulent consumption by the rich will have as its counterpart the increasingly austere consumption by the poor, and even by the now shrinking middle class. Eventually, the newly poor will not be able to earn enough to maintain their previous levels of consumption. Consequently, some goods produced will not be consumed, thus there will be fewer goods produced, there will be fewer producers or workers, there will be fewer goods consumed, and so on. We have yet another kind of cycle.

It is exactly this process that has long been identified (by John Maynard Keynes, among others) as one of the classical explanations of how the growing inequality of the 1920s led to a crisis of under-consumption and overproduction and then to the Great Depression of the 1930s. A similar cycle had occurred earlier, when the growing inequality of the 1880s had issued in the depression of the 1890s (which, at that time, had also been called the Great Depression).

--The American Conservative, The Rich Get Richer

This "conservative" periodical goes on to say that global inequalities will continue to fuel world wide terrorism. It gives the lie to Bush's simplistic, moronic: "they just hate freedom!"

By creating a tiny ruling elite, the GOP turned the relatively egalitarian America of the post World War II years into a banana republic ruled over by mediocrities, opportunists, common crooks and bigots. It is easy enough and accurate to say of the post-Abramoff GOP that it is no longer a political party. The GOP has become a crime syndicate, quite possibly a criminal conspiracy.

Now the GOP, increasingly unpopular for its jingoistic support for and complicity with the illegitimate regime of George W. Bush, is mounting a campaign against Democratic efforts to undo just a portion of the harm that has been done this nation by the back to back misrules of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. It is the Fairness Doctrine that the GOP now has in its cross hairs.

Let us dispel upfront some of the lies that are told about the Communications Act of 1934 and the so-called Fairness Doctrine. Predictably, both will be "positioned" by the GOP as increased government regulation. In fact, the Act itself made its purpose with respect to the "regulation" of content very clear:

§ 559. Obscene programming

Whoever transmits over any cable system any matter which is obscene or otherwise unprotected by the Constitution of the United States shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.

Simply, if your speech is protected by the US Constitution, specifcally, the First Amendment, then your speech on the air is likewise protected. There is, then, no "regulation" or "censorship" applied to broadcasting that is not applied to all speech under the First Amendment. May we close the door on that issue now?

§ 326. Censorship

Nothing in this chapter shall be understood or construed to give the Commission the power of censorship over the radio communications or signals transmitted by any radio station, and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech by means of radio communication.

I have had considerable experience in this industry. I found that clause to have been the case during those years in which I was most active. Later, various assaults by the Reagan regime most certainly caused a deteriorating broadcast environment. Licensing requirements were so relaxed that now Clear Channel operates in a completely automated mode, offering no local emergency service whatsoever to most of its communities.

Why is that important? Consider rural communities in the great plans states. Without a committment from the local radio station, warnings of imminent tornadoes can be ignored. In fact, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of citizenry trying to inform local radio stations of impending storms or disasters and getting nothing but an answering machine. A timely warning of a killer tornado, for example, might mean the difference between life and death. Broadcasters operating in a purely automated mode, as Clear Channel often does, are irresponsible. Such an outlet does not deserve a license.

Clear Channel has its origins in George W. Bush's hometown of Midland, TX, a part of the country that I know well. KCRS in Midland was owned by Wendall Mayes, Clear Channel's founding family.

Goppers have already mounted a full court press to "position" the Fairness Doctrine. It will be called an abrogation of free speech by Big Brother. In fact, FOX and its five or six rivals constitute big brother and they have all but stifled dissent by eliminating citizen access to the air waves. If you don't believe me, just call up your local Fox affiliate and ask them to give you 30 minutes, a MERE 30 minutes to reply to just one of Bill O'Reilly's innumerable absurdities, distortions or outright lies. Ask Fox to give you just five minutes of prime time to reply to Sean Hannity's propaganda with just a soupcon of truth, common sense, or logic.

Call up Clear Channel and tell them you would like just 10 minutes to reply to Rush Limbaugh's life time of belligerence, outright lies, inanities and mind-numbing anti-intellectualism. Just ten minutes to counter a lifetime of crap representing nothing less than a diminution of what it means to be a human being does not seem like too much to ask. But you won't call because you know already that I am right. You know already that you won't get past the receptionist. You don't stand a chance of getting your view on the air. That's why we need to restore the Fairness Doctrine.

Savage continued to label supporters of the Fairness Doctrine "Nazis"

On the May 15 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage called Democrats who support the proposed Media  Ownership Reform Act (MORA), "National Socialists," continuing his pattern of comparing Democratic supporters of MORA to "Nazis." MORA would reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine," which, until 1987, required "that discussion of public issues be presented on broadcast stations and that each side of those issues must be given fair coverage," as the Supreme Court wrote when it upheld the doctrine in 1969.

Citing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) opposition to the Fairness Doctrine, Savage said: "If Senator Mitch McConnell will be the first to stand up against ... the National Socialists in the Democrat [sic] Party who are trying to ban free speech in this country, I will vote for any Republican." Later in the program, Savage directed a caller to an article on his website about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, saying, "[T]he reason I want you to do that is because there are people in this country who would gladly line up conservatives and shoot them against the wall." When the caller responded that those who would do so are "mentally insane," Savage replied, "No, they're not. They're mainstream progressives." He added: "They're no different than the Bolsheviks in 1917."

As Media Matters for America has noted, Savage has repeatedly compared Democrats to "Nazis." On the May 2 broadcast of his radio show, Savage called MORA's author, Rep. Maurice

Hinchey (NY), the "chief National Socialist," adding that Hinchey is seeking "the final solution for conservatives on talk radio." Additionally, on the May 11 broadcast, Savage denounced Rep. Robert Wexler's (FL) questioning of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales during a May 10 congressional hearing about the firing of US attorneys: "The last time I saw a politician scream at someone like that was in Nazi Germany in the kangaroo court trial against people who conspired to kill Hitler."

The Savage Nation reaches more than 8 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it the third most-listened-to talk radio show in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

That's why the GOP will fight the Fairness Doctrine with an organized campaign of propaganda and outright lies. The GOP does not want you to be on the air unless you are spouting GOP propaganda and talking points. The GOP does not want to hear your voice. The GOP will fight your efforts to be heard above the right wing noise machine. The GOP will deprive you of Free Speech and call it "liberty". The GOP will subvert the Constitution and call it "Americanism". The GOP will suck up to Fox to deprive you of the blessings of Democracy and pretend that all is "fair and balanced".

Having divided the nation into haves and have nots, the GOP now divides the nation ideologically. By eliminating the Fairness Doctrine the GOP unleashes upon an unsuspecting nation the Four Horsemen of a Propaganda Apocalypse: ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, and the GOP thought police.

Now, let's consider what the bill restoring the Communications Act of 1934 - called "Nazi" by Savage - will accomplish.

Bill Summary

I. Guarantees Fairness in Broadcasting

Our airwaves are a precious and limited commodity that belong to the general public. As such, they are regulated by the government. From 1949 to 1987, a keystone of this regulation was the Fairness Doctrine, an assurance that the American audience would be guaranteed sufficiently robust debate on controversial and pressing issues. Despite numerous instances of support from the US Supreme Court, President Reagan's FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and a subsequent bill passed by Congress to place the doctrine into federal law was then vetoed by Reagan.

MORA would amend the 1934 Communications Act to restore the Fairness Doctrine and explicitly require broadcast licensees to provide a reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance.

II. Restores Broadcast Ownership Limitations

Nearly 60 years ago, the Supreme Court declared that "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is essential to the condition of a free society." And yet, today, a mere five companies own the broadcast networks, 90 percent of the top 50 cable networks, produce three-quarters of all prime time programming, and control 70 percent of the prime time television market share. One-third of America's independently-owned television stations have vanished since 1975.

There has also been a severe decline in the number of minority-owned broadcast stations; minorities own a mere four percent of stations today.

• MORA would restore a standard to prevent any one company from owning broadcast stations that reach more than 35 percent of US television households.


• The bill would reduce local radio ownership caps to limit a single company from owning more than a certain number of stations within a certain broadcast market, with the limit varying depending upon the size of each market.


• Furthermore, the legislation would restore the Broadcast-Cable and Broadcast-Satellite Cross-Ownership Rules to keep a company from having conflicting ownerships in a cable company and/or a satellite carrier and a broadcast station offering service in the same market.


• Finally, MORA would prevent media owners from grandfathering their current arrangement into the new system, requiring parties to divest in order to comply with these new limitations within one year.

III. Invalidates Media Ownership Deregulation

MORA would invalidate the considerably weakened media ownership rules that were adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2003; rules that are now under new scrutiny through the FCC's Future Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The legislation further prevents the FCC from including media ownership rules in future undertakings of the commission's Biennial Review Process.

IV. Establishes a New Media Ownership Review Process

MORA creates a new review process, to be carried by the FCC every three years, on how the commission's regulations on media ownership promote and protect localism, competition, diversity of voices, diversity of ownership, children's programming, small and local broadcasters, and technological advancement. The bill requires the FCC to report to Congress on its findings.

V. Requires Reports for Public Interest

MORA requires broadcast licensees to publish a report every two years on how the station is serving the public interest. The legislation also requires licensees to hold at least two community public hearings per year to determine local needs and interests.

An old shibboleth states that a revolutionary faction will first seize a nation's media. Both the US media and the people were well served and protected under the terms of the US Communications act of 1934. The people were guaranteed continued ownership of the airwaves themselves, free speech was guaranteed, opposing voices had access to the "air". Despite protestations by an increasingly rabid right wing, licenses were not difficult to get.

My first boss opened an FM station in Odessa, TX for an investment of less than $20,000. It was operated virtually hassle free for years. The most odious requirement was that of keeping a station log. Eventually, automation would eliminate even that chore. I could never understand why owners were so unhappy considering that the government had virtually guaranteed them a good living.

Alas - rapacious radicals were not content to share the airwaves with mere rabble. This revolutionary elite would find in Reagan a means by which our airwaves could be seized. With the ascension of Fox, the coup d'etat became the fait accompli.

Big Brother had arrived.

Addendum:

 Reagan's so-called campaign of de-regulation gutted the Communications Act of 1934. It succeeded in the goal about which even Reganites dared not speak: that of giving to the increasingly radical and theorcratic right wing the control of our nation's media. They have largely succeed. As author Mark Crispen Miller relates, however, the radical theorcrats and right wing extremists are not done. The worst is yet to come unless we act to counter this enemy within.

Miller hits a home run with this one. He is ABSOLUTELY correct. It will be a miracle if this nation survives this assault on every principle that made us a free nation. The Theocrats support the GOP with whom its made a bargain. The GOP, however, is not a political party. It's a criminal conspiracy.

---

---

JFK: Case Re-Opened

More than forty years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a British newspaper reports that new research has given new life to an old idea: Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman. A new investigation could stir up a can of worms and pose a threat to official orthodoxy.

A complete investigation of the murder of JFK must begin anew, taking into consideration the possiblity that much of the evidence that has managed to survive has most probably been tampered with. That would include still photographs taken by amateurs in Dealy Plaza as well as the famous Zapruder film, in which the President's head is clearly seen to lurch backward upon a bullet's impact.

Doubt Cast On JFK ‘Lone Assassin’ Theory

From The Independent UK
By Andrew Buncombe

More than 40 years after he was fatally shot in Dallas, researchers have added fresh fuel to the speculation over who was involved in the assassination of President John F Kennedy by claiming the original bullet analysis was flawed and cannot rule out that a second gunman was involved.

Using new scientific techniques not available to previous researchers and analysing bullets from the same batch purportedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald, the team has argued that it cannot be assumed that Oswald was the only assassin involved. While they do not claim evidence to prove a second gunman participated, they say the original fragments of the bullets recovered from the scene of the shooting should be re-examined.

“Given the significance and impact of the JFK assassination, it is scientifically desirable for fragments to be re-analysed,” the researchers write in the journal Annals of Applied Statistics.

Kennedy, the 35th US president, was fatally shot as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas on 22 November 1963. The official Warren commission that investigated the killing concluded the following year that the president had been killed by two of three shots fired by Oswald - his first shot having missed - from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

-- Read More Doubt   

I would hope that a new investigation of the assassination of JFK will begin with a clean slate. The first piece of hard evidence to be considered is the film shot by Abraham Zapruder using an 8mm Bell and Howell Camera from a vantage point on the north side of Elm Street. Long before we saw the film, Dallas viewers saw the interview.

EDDIE BARKER: At the time of the assassination, I was the news director for KRLD radio and KRLD television, the CBS affiliates in Dallas...

Zapruder was in a position to film the approaching motocade, following it with his camera as a fatal bullet was seen blasting away portions of the President's skull.

You may not have noticed, near the beginning of the film, a little girl running along the south side of Elm Street. Known to history as "the little girl in the red dress", her name, until she married, was Rosemary Willis. Her father, Phillip Willis, was taking 35mm color slides that day. He too can be seen in the film, looking forward at his daughter, perhaps calling to her. She appears to have been following the motorcade and suddenly stops.

Years later, I met and interviewed her. Her story, however fascinating, has been all but ignored by the mainstream media. When we met, she produced several boxes of color slides that had been taken by her father that day in Dealy Plaza. I put them on a light table and examined them with a loupe. I immediately recognized Dealy Plaza, the limoousine, the motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, the Pergola, the Grassy Knoll, the Triple Underpass, place names now burned into the consciousness of a scarred nation.

One Phillip Willis took a series of 12 photos of Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, in the minutes before and after the assassination. Mr. Willis' photos and testimony before the Commission appear in the report.

He was not questioned about the eighth photo, a shot of the Book Depository entrance shortly after the shooting. As Willis later pointed out, one of the men in the photo "looks so much like (Jack Ruby), it's pitiful". F.B.I. agents questioning Willis agreed with him that the man bore a powerful resemblance to Ruby. When Willis mentioned this to the Commission, no interest was shown. When the photo was published in the Warren Report, a considerable part of the Ruby lookalike's face had been cropped away. 

        Referred to in the literature of the assassination as the "little girl in the red dress", she can be              seen in the Zapruder film above, running along the south side of Elm Street. She runs and then            stops suddenly just as the Presidential limousine is partially blocked by a sign between the                   mortocade and Abraham Zapruder's camera.

         
        --JFK Conspiracy Theory

At last, Rosemary (if I may be so familiar) pointed out some especially interesting slides. One of them was a shot of the Pergola, above the grassy knoll, taken from her father's position on the south side of Elm Street. Through the columns, all was clear. Then Rosemary produced an old copy of Look Magazine and turned to a double page spread. Reproduced over facing pages was her father's photograph of the limousine with the Pergola behind it.
"Do you notice anything unusual?" she aksed.

Sure enough. In the magazine spread, a train locomotive could plainly be seen between the columns. Indeed, there are railroad tracks in that area to this day as any Google maps search will reveal. Those tracks were there in 1963 as well. It was in that railyard that three "tramps" had been arrested prior to the Kennedy assassination. [See: JFK Conspirator Wanted Every Kennedy Dead ]

But why was a locomotive in the published picture but no locomotive in the "slide"? Rosemary explained that after Look Magazine published her father's pictures, FBI agents took all her father's slides. As I recall, the slides were kept for several years. When they were returned at last, every slide that had depicted the train had been doctored. The train was gone.

Why would the FBI find it necessary to remove a train? What did the FBI find threatening about a train? I've speculated that the train was the egress, the perfect getaway for the assassins who fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll just as Mark Lane had theorized years ago. That raises the question: why would the FBI protect an assassins get-away? Unless the FBI was a part of the plot, lately called a coup d'etat, it would not.

However speculative my thoughts, it is fair to say that when you have uncovered the FBI's motive for removing the seemingly innocent picture of a train, you will have gone a long way toward explaining why the Warren Commission insisted upon the theory that the fatal shot came from the rear when any examination of the Zapruder film will reveal otherwise. Gerald Posner's absurd theory of "jet effects" nothwithstanding.

It was in 1993 that author Gerald Posner published a book entitled Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK [New York: Random House, 1993. Pp. xvi, 607. ISBN 0-679-41825-3.] in which he posited the now infamous "jet effect".

The fact that Posner finds it necessary to posit a "jet effect", however bogus and elusive the effect has proven to be in experiment, is an admission that JFK's head does, in fact, jerk backward upon being struck by a bullet on frame 313. If the backward motion were not real, why posit a "theory" to explain it. It is also interesting that those who debunk "conspiracy theorists" are themselves the purveyors of the most outrageous and convoluted theories. The "jet effects" is just such a theory, concocted to explain a version of events that has never conformed to observed reality. One of the most brilliant refutations of Posner - specifically the experimental results that demolished the mythical "jet effect" - can be found in Skeptic Magazine, Volume 6, Number 4.

Posner embraced the dubious single, "magic bullet" which he says struck Kennedy in the upper back exited the throat, passed through Governor John Connally only to emerge in near mint condition.

The theory is dubious from the outset because the weight of the evidence indicates that the magic bullet was not the object that injured Connally's thigh. According to the Parkland doctors and the WC, the object that injured Connally's thigh deposited a fragment in the femur bone. But did a bullet strike the thigh? Or was it just a fragment? The initial police report on the thigh wound, citing Parkland doctors, stated that it was caused by a fragment. Connally's own press secretary, Bill Stinson, said the same thing on the afternoon of the assassination. Dr. Malcolm Perry, who assisted with the surgery on the thigh, told Harold Weisberg that the thigh wound was caused by a fragment, not by a whole missile. And Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's chest surgeon, has likewise said that only a fragment struck the thigh.
- Dr. John Nichols, professor of pathology; note: the bullet is officially labeled as Commission Exhibit (CE) 399.argued that the missile's alleged journey could NOT have produced the amount of flattening that the bullet suffered, even though it appears to be rather slight). [quoted in Hasty Judgement: A Republy to Gerald Posner 'Why the JFK Case is Not Closed!]   

Lately other theorists, perhaps to cover over the difficulties Posner got into by positing in violation of Occam's Razor a "jet effect", have said that JFK's head actually moves forward upon being struck by the fatal bullet. For a start, that is counter-intuitive. Secondly, the film itself disproves it. Examined frame by frame, JFK's indeed moves forward from just before frame 310 until the bullet strikes precisely on frame 313. From frame 313, the head clearly moves backward and quite dramatically. This is obviously the result of having been struck by the fatal shot fired from the front and most certainly the vicinity of the grassy knoll.

It would appear that not only "trains" were removed from still photos, but the famous Zapruder film itself may have been doctored while in the "protective custody" of the government of the United States.

The dissapearing train is one of many unexplained anomolies surrounding the murder of JFK. Another is the apparent dismissal of JFK's Secret Service protection.

The only motivation that I can attribute to whomever wanted to doctor the Willis photos and the Zapruder rilm must be to cover up or obscure the significance of the Grassy Knoll, the Pergola and, of course, the train and tracks behind them.

I am a signal supervisor for the Union Terminal and I was inspecting signal and switches and stopped to watch the parade. I was standing on top of the triple underpass and the President's car was coming down Elm Street and when they got just about to the Arcade I heard what I thought for the moment was a fire cracker and he slumped over and I looked over toward the arcade and trees and saw a puff of smoke come from the trees and I heard three more shots after the first shot but that was the only puff of smoke I saw.
I immediately ran around to where I could see behind the arcade and did not see anyone running from there. But the puff of smoke I saw definitely came fromm behind the arcade through the trees. After the first shot the President slumped over and Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and tried to get over in the back seat to him and then the second shot rang out. After the first shot the secret service man raised up in the seat with a machine gun and then dropped back down in the seat. And they immediately sped off. Everything is spinning in my head and if I remember anything else later I will come back and tell Bill.  

--Statement of S. M. Holland, WCH 19, p. 473, taken 11/22/63

---

Bush is killing and torturing innocent people because he has neurotic, personal problems with "Daddy"

Books have been written about plans Bush made even before the election of 2000 to attack and invade Iraq. It was never about weapons of mass destruction except as it might be cited as a convenient pretext. It is most certainly about Bush's problems with "Daddy" who "failed" to unseat Saddam Hussein. Junior, always in Senior's shadow, may have seen in this "failure" an opening, a score to settle. With "Daddy"!

It is tragic that Bush's personal problems, his observable lack of self-esteem would manifest themselves in aggressive war and torture.

The history of psychology is replete with clever sociopaths who managed to hide their afflictions. Bush, who boasted that he does "not do nuance", is not so talented. His belligerance is often worn on his sleeve.

You don't need a PhD in psychology to understand how this bully attitude translates into the crime of aggressive war, a violation of international law that the US, itself, had insisted upon.

The public record is replete with direct, verifiable evidence of this as well as coincidences of the truly GOP kind. To wit:

• Insiders -- Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill -- have stated that the Bush administration was focused on invading Iraq from the outset. [See CBS News: Bush Sought "Way" To Invade Iraq?]
  

• Bob Woodward -- in "Plan of Attack" -- described a Saudi government offer of some $1 billion to the Bush administration for what were called "joint intelligence operations" designed to overthrow Saddam Hussein by April of 2002. [See Bob Woodward, "Plan of Attack," Page 229]
  

• The deal was sweetened. Saudi Prince Bandar promised that Saudi Arabia would lower crude oil prices prior to the Presidential re-election campaign.
  

Clearly, all the pieces had been put into place: the Saudi payoff, a "sweetener" to seal the deal, the pretext, the timing!

What may be most disturbing about this eye-opening timeline of atrocity, aggressive war, and phony terrorism is that it may stem from a deep-seated neurosis that has its origins in Bush's festering resentment of his father. " He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz.

"My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it." He [Geo. W. Bush] said, "If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

- Russ Baker, Common Dreams

Other revelations from Herskowitz included a laundry list of Bush neuroses, relating to his feelings of resentment towards or inadequacy compared to his father, celebrated as a WWII hero and a successful businessman:

• In 2003, Bush's father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq.

• Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been "excused."

• Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in pilot's garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.
  

Bush described his own business ventures as "floundering" before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.

Not surprisingly, Bush Jr. would exorcise his demons with an old strategy that had its origin in the Ronald Reagan administration. It was, according to Herskowitz, Dick Cheney who summed it all up long before 911:

Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.

- Dick Cheney [as quoted by author Mickey Herskowitz]

Hermann Goering said something similar and equally outrageous.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country."

-Hermann Goering, awaiting trial for war crimes at Nuremberg

The quote has been unsuccessfully debunked. But, in fact, it is real. Goering made those remarks to Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist charged with "interviewing" the Nazi war criminals during the long trial at Nuremberg following World War II. You can find Goering's comments in Gilbert's essential: Nuremberg Diary. Bush and Cheney are just as willainous as Goering but lack Goering's wit.

Goering's character is rich and multifaceted. The facets can hardly be reconciled as belonging to the same person. So much about him is appealing - his intelligence, his sense of humor, his expansive good-natured bonhomie, his childlike responses to praise or reprimand. But a man can smile and smile and still be a villain. Goering uses the weaker defendants to pressure the more independent ones to toe his "party line" of maintaining loyalty to Hitler. He offers to trade or withhold testimony, inveigles his lawyer into intimidating a witness, and even threatens retaliation by the Feme kangaroo courts. In part because the author's duties required him to prevent that sort of behavior, he spent more time with Goering than with any of the other defendants. In part, though, I think he just found him fascinating.

- Review of Nuremberg Diary, Amazon.com

Having read this book, I vouch for this review. That Hitler and Goering rose to power is almost as understandable as it is lamentable. The rise of a blithering idiot and "Darth" Cheney and is completely incomprehensible. Much is said about the stolen election. I agree that Gore won Florida but it should never have been that close.

It's bad enough that Bush has tried to work out his personal problems by sending U.S. troops to their deaths; he has, moreover, murdered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. And he has tried repeatedly to justify the American aggression against Iraq with numerous ex post facto rationales -- all of them lies.

Thus Bush's presidency becomes the story of a pathetic, insecure little man who, because he had a personal problem with his "daddy," would defraud the citizens of the United States and the world, would send U.S. troops in harm's way, and would order an illegal war that would kill thousands of innocent Iraqis -- citizens of a sovereign nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with 911.

Bush would do all this and, in the process, place himself above the law, the judiciary, and the legislative. He did it all to keep his fraud intact, to hide his lie, to shore up his own flagging self-esteem.

HOME

The Existentialist Cowboy

American Empire
Bush
War Crimes
Perpetual War
Treason

Mass Murder and High Treason

There are glaring discrepancies surrounding Bush's activities on the morning of 911. At the very least, George W. Bush is the liar we know him to be. At worst, the discrepancies may lead one to conclude that Bush knew about the events of 911 well in advance and did absolutely nothing.

The timeline of his travels depicts a man trying to stay out of the line of fire. It does not portray a President concerned with the lives of American citizens. It does not portray a "commander-in-chief" or a "decider". It portrays a weak-kneed wimp at the mercy of his "handlers", the real power behind the throne. Or - should I say "dictatorship"?

His false statements concerning his activities on that day raise doubts not only about his credibility but also the possibility that the President of the United States is complicit in mass murder and high treason.

Let's look at the time line which becomes a chronology of incredible coincidences, a literal round up of the usual suspects.

(8:00 a.m.): Former President George H. W. Bush Heads off After Spending Night at the White House

Former President George H. W. Bush, along with former First Lady Barbara Bush, leaves Washington, DC, by private jet, bound for a speaking engagement in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Bushes spent the previous night at the White House. They had flown to Washington the previous day to attend several meetings and a dinner. One of the meetings attended by the former president was the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group, which was also attended by Shafig bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers (see (9:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). They are later informed of the WTC attacks while on their jet. Due to all planes being grounded, they have to land in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. [CBS News, 11/1/2002; Newsweek, 10/20/2003; CNN, 10/25/2003]

But things get even weirder and there are no innocent explanations.

George W. Bush left his Florida hotel about 8:35 AM. But, according to ABC News, just before leaving the hotel, reporters saw Andy Card whispering into Bush's ear. The topic of whispered conversation, according to the network, was the stunning events taking place in New York.

But the first plane did not crash into the north tower until 8:45 AM. "What was going on in New York" was not yet going on when Bush and Card talked about it. Yet, we are led to believe that Card and Bush discussed an event that would not take place for another ten minutes or so.

Much later, Bush would claim that while at the school in Florida, he saw the first plane crash the north tower on a TV that had been set up for him. How convenient!

The only known footage of that event was not broadcast until the next day. Presumably, no one knew it was going to happen. Or did they? Bush, however, made his claim on two occasions leading one to believe that this was not a mere slip of the tongue. The verbatim transcripts are still available at the White House web site. Nor was Bush referring to the crash of the second plane into the south tower. He is video taped being given that information by Card while still in the classroom. [depicted under the headline] Even Bush is not likely to have forgotten that.

If Bush told the truth about seeing a plane crash the north tower on live TV, it could only have been on monitors getting a feed from cameras placed in anticipation of an attack. If Bush is telling the truth about seeing the first plane, then he most certainly would have seen it on the TV depicted in the photos above. This is a room at the school where Bush had read goat stories to children, where Andy Card was seen in stills and in video informing Bush: "[The] second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." Though Card is often quoted as having said "A second plane", Bush himself attributes to Andy Card the word "the". I find the use of the word "the" in this context to be interesting and revelatory.

Look closely at the above monitors. It has been pointed out to me that there is no network logo or "graphics bar" running across the bottom of the TV screen, though it clearly depicts the WTC. If it were a network feed, the network logo would be present. If it was, indeed, a closed circuit set up that Bush had seen, there might not be one. Clearly, there is no logo depicted above.

If Bush merely lied that is one thing. But consider the implications if Bush had, in fact, viewed a closed-circuit broadcast with cameras placed in advance delivering a signal that might be viewed by a complicit President. If that is the case, then Bush is not merely a liar as we know him to be. He is much more besides. He is a murderous traitor, complicit in mass murder, a conspirator to high treason.

The Existentialist Cowboy

Conservative Lies
Indict Bush
Why Conservatives Hate America
GOP Crime Syndicate
Bush

Spread the word: