Conservatives never learn. Jeb Bush involved in collapse of Lehman Bros. [Reuters]
Jewish Taliban brutally beating women in Jerusalem.
Wednesday is Constitution Day, a day to mourn the destruction of the US Constitution under NeoCon rule.
Heckofajob, Brownie. FEMA failing Galveston and Houston just like they did New Orleans after Katrina.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 16 notes, thomasmc.com.
Now that the US neocons have lost their favorite dictator stooge, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, they are left with a troupe of rotating circus clowns to work with. It’s like the Bush Administration looked around and asked itself, ‘How can we create more terrorists to fight?’ They came up with the thought that it would really work to destabilize Pakistan as much as possible, and this they are now on a quest to accomplish.
Pakistan has 170,000,000 people and is an unnatural political creation in the best of times. But add to the situation the Pentagon, and voilà! Now add to that nuclear weapons! Add to that some Muslim fundamentalism! Add to that Christian fundamentalism! BANG!!!!!!!!!
As a deeply religious person, I have to ask myself, What Would Jesus Do? And as a deeply political person, I have to ask myself, What Would President Sarah Palin Do? And last of all, What would the new commander of CENTCOM, General Petraeus Do? This is kind of a radioactive situation now brewing, is it not?
What is nice about all this, of course, is how the Man Bringing Change, Barack Obama, is also set out to throw some more bombs into this whole thick brew. Isn’t he inspiring? The guy and his good buddy Joe want to get US kids to fight in this area of their ‘great foreign expertise’! Never mind President Palin. So don’t you just pity the poor people of Pakistan? What a future they have ahead for themselves. And what a future our kids will have, too.
It’s a fact that the Democrats treated the protesters with as much contempt as the GOP, it’s obvious their promise of change is just an empty slogan. If they really meant it, they would have embraced the protesters, and used them to point out the need for change, instead of treating them as terrorist suspects for questioning the status quo.
John McCain’s lies about Katrina.
Cindy McCain’s sister says she’s voting for Obama. “I wouldn’t vote for John McCain if he was a Democrat. I would not vote at all before I’d vote for him.”
Pandering to die-hard Clintonistas, McCain picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for VP. I wonder how many Conservatives would actually vote to put a woman a heart beat away from the Oval Office, with McCain as old as he is?
Oh, and she’s under ethics investigation for abuse of power. No wonder he chose her.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 29, thomasmc.com.
When it comes to American imperialism, there is no difference at all between Obama and McCain. So it is no surprise at all to see Barack Obama supporting George W. Bush’s belligerent neocon aggression against Russia. The voice of the American imperialist neocons is The Wall Street Journal, and here is their report- President Bush Wins Sen Barack Obama’s Backing Over Georgia
The US and its allies continue to try to bully and lecture Russia about Russia’s rebuttal of NATO-Pentagon’s’ push toward going to war with them. But surprise! This won’t work. Russia says withdrawal complete The DC government thugs and buffoons can hiss and howl all they want, alongside their civilian Empire propaganda media cohorts, but Russia is fed up with US imperialism and will no longer be cajoled to just retreat worldwide.
What are all the pacifist types in the US ‘Peace’ babble Movement going to do now, talk more Church? We need a real antiwar movement and one that knows what’s really going on and that has backbone enough to stand up to the Democratic Party’s efforts to control and derail all protest.
Russia is drawing a line and will not continue to let NATO just advance. They are in the right and we need to organize to stop our own country’s imperialist war making now! Iraq is just a sideshow in what the neocons and Pentagon are now engaged in doing.
— — — Musharraf
“running out of time”
Can you believe that this US puppet thug is still in office? It’s time for him to go home to the US or Britain and The Empire he has served up his own people to. Good Bye, Pervez! Getting rid of you is the first step for the people of Pakistan in ridding themselves of the American Neocons and their liberal Democratic Party Pentagon apologists who currently run their country. He will become another criminal ex-dictator quite possibly living on American shores.
The US government is moving toward direct military confrontation against Russia as Bush has directed the US military to begin shipping ‘aid’ to Georgia. The Pentagon has already been ferrying Georgian troops back into Georgia from out of Iraq, where they functioned as US mercenaries there in the US occupation of that country. Because of DC’s continued belligerence all over the globe and now its role in destroying South Ossetia’s capital, Russia has little choice other than to stand up to the current Bush Administration and draw the line hard and fast now, and doing that can lead to a nuclear showdown quite quickly.
The Democratic Party has an opportunity to veto this Republican begun war, but so far has remained utterly silent. Correct that. Actually some leading advisers to the DP also are pushing for further dangerous confrontation against Russia. I am talking about Zbigniew Brzezinski in special who is now a Barack Obama adviser. This infamous Cold Warrior who gave Osama bin Laden his start in Afghanistan is advocating more US government aggression against Russia, not less.
What do the latest Rice and Bush communiques signify? Bush orders aid to Georgia, Rice to visit Tbilisi One thing is for sure, and that is that George W. Bush and his neocons are a lot stupider, a lot looser with their power, and a lot more arrogant than John F. Kennedy ever was, and that spells trouble for us all. The Democratic Party’s passive acceptance of the Bush plan to continue attacking Russia is very disturbing.
The Russians have issued a peace plan for Georgia and the US to accept, and SURPRISE!
It’s the same peace plan that was in place before, which the US and Georgia violated by entering and attacking South Ossetia. The peace plan calls for non- aggression in South Ossetia to be monitored by peacekeeping troops. FACTBOX-Peace plan for Georgia: what is it? This peace plan is essentially the same one that the European Union has already proposed and that was already once in place.
However, it is obvious to all that the US and Georgian governments do not feel in the least obligated to abide by this plan since they have already violated it once by unilatrally sending troops into South Ossetia. Further the official US government propaganda mills in the US (the New York Times, Washington Post, George Dubya Bush, Rice, etc.) have made it clear with their continued belligerency that this attack on South Ossetia was only the beginning of the continued US government plan to now constantly attack Russia. They have no desire at all to retreat despite the human suffering their war plans are causing. They want to control the natural resources of Asia for US corporate interests and that is all that counts for them.
It seems clear that this is the new Republican plan to try to advance John McCain’s chances for entering into the White House, too, and since the Democrats share the same foreign policy goals of the Republicans they will not be able to counter the Republican offensive but will instead echo everything the Bush Administration does. The Republican plan is to simply reignite Cold War rhetoric against the nationalist capitalist regime of the country today named Russia, and to attack the Democratic Party for being supposedly weak in this campaign.
Liberal pacifists and academic Left Libertarians in the Peace Movement are also not prepared to do anything against this new neocon propaganda offensive against Russia. They also tag along with the Republicans spewing out constant anti- Chinese and anti- Russia vitriol all on their own. Their mantra has always been merely a call to equally and incessantly blame victims of US aggression alongside the blame they toss out against the US government for causing the chaos and conflict in the world today.
But how can a US Antiwar Movement be built on such a foundation like that? In fact, you hardly see these people active even going through the motions of organizing a US Antiwar Movement. It is all talk and writing for the liberal community that they are engaged in and propagandizing for, and nothing of real organizing an Antiwar Movement. By equalizing responsibility as they do, in fact they expose themselves as being US nationalists themselves despite their criticisms of the US corporate government, simply because who is to blame is not equal at all in the least.
Russia and China are now engaged by the US government in a very real war of worldwide proportions, and yet the public in the US is not even vaguely aware in the least of what their own corporate dictatorship government has planned for us all. Where will the next new fighting be started by the militarists in the White House? How can they be stopped without total disaster occurring? The future indeed does look grim.
One aspect of interest is how the US government used Georgia to muscle out the interests of all the Western European countries besides the United Kingdom This fighting has been a US power government play to mold NATO as it wants it to be molded, the Europeans be damned. See the Wall Street Journal commentary… Splits Emerge Within EU
Russia should not take any US talk of peace seriously, since the US government’s actions since the fall of the exSoviet Union have made it already clear that the US corporations merely want to beat down Russia with a big stick.
We are not seeing much protest against the joint Georgia-US-governments’ game in South Ossetia from the American liberal community, because DP voting liberals sense that the political party they continue to follow like sheep, The Democratic Party, is tagging along behind the Neocon game plan, enabling it to continue and multiply its negative results to peace worldwide.
Obama is as quiet as a church mouse about how Georgia began the hostilities by bombarding civilians in South Ossetia. He’s an imperialist behind NATO aggression, every bit as much as Dick Cheney’s troops are. You won’t hear Obama contradicting the crap coming out of DC from Dubya Bush that declares Russia supposedly initiated this conflict.
It is hard to get away from the reality though, that Georgia began this conflict by murdering several thousand innocent civilians and causing thousands of others to become refugees from their homes. It was an effort by the Georgia government to ethnically cleanse a troubling region for themselves. Washington now wants to spin their war effort in another manner altogether, and the Democratic Party aligned liberal intellectuals are mute. The blame game has them attacking Russia instead of owning up to what they, the US government, authorized the Georgian government to do.
Nurse! Confused old man camplains, saying surge started almost a year before it did, and that it protected a man who was actually assassinated. [video]
Remember: McCain had a “love child” with a black prostitute! National Enquirer claims John Edwards has a “love child” with another woman. Considering the source, I’m surprised they didn’t claim the baby was Bat Boy, and the mother was a space alien. Oh, and never mind that the alleged mother says the story is total bullshit. Republicans love bullshit!
A government of lies. One of the most deceitful rules our joke of a Congress runs by, is that members have a certain number of days when they can “revise” their testimony in the Congressional Record. So, they can lie their asses off in front of the cameras, and change their story later. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has now taken that to the extreme. While Karl Rove committed contempt of Congress by refusing to obey a subpoena to testify about his involvement in the prosecution of AL Governor Siegelman (D), Lamar has now submitted a fictitious account of Rove actually testifying, thus removing the possibility of contempt charges being filed.
This is the history the delusionists can’t wait to destroy. National Geographic issue on the wonders of Iran.
With apologies to Monty Python. Nobody ever expects the Domionist Agenda! When Dominionism started its rise to power back in the 80s, I was a fundamentalist myself. I remember an issue of Christianity Today warning there was nothing Christian about the movement, and suggesting it was actually the religion of the AntiChrist. Maybe there are prophets, after all.
Reagan worshippers revive their demand that Reagan’s face be put on the $10 bill. What more could you ask to reward the man who brought us all the concept of deregulation, which has destroyed the American economy, and made WE THE PEOPLE little more than slaves to the Corporate Elite? On the other hand, we could put his face on the penny, and then quit minting it because it isn’t worth anything anymore.
Uh oh. Israel is now losing the support of the NeoCons.
Obama quickly losing support of antiwar activists.
What’s missing from The Reich? Slavery!
Can’t get on a plane because someone with a name just 8 letters different is on the terrorist watch list? Can you get off it? Politiburo says “nyet!”
Kinky! Charles Rangel (D-NY) files ethics probe…of himself.
Congresswoman Sally Kern (R-OK) caught trying to smuggle a gun into Capitol. Maybe the gays made her do it? She blames them for everything else.
Hatemongering bigot warns House hearing of black gang raping lesbians if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is overtuned. “Oh, and did I mention they’re black!”
Speaking of rape. Congratulations on your winning bid to buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I wonder which of the Bush clan is making a billion off of this bailout?
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 24, thomasmc.com.
It used to be we had reporters who asked questions. KARL ROVE DEFIES SUBPOENA, LEAVE COUNTRY. Oh? And to where did he flee? Can’t a subpoena be grounds to bar someone exiting the country? Rove’s convenient getaway was long-planned? Do all the Neocons have escape clauses in the form of standing tickets to parts unknown? Are these veritable D.B. Cooper golden-parachutes so to speak?
Why are we left to ask these questions?
We need to ask our journalists why they are obvious accomplices to Rove’s escape? They may take us for retards, but we’re going to be blood-thirsty retards. Let’s string each an every one of the traitors up while we track Rove’s run from the law without their help. Or will the press-credentials give newsmen propagandists a free pass out of the country and out of law’s reach as well?
“A Neoconservative is an arsonist who sets a fire, and six years later, brags that no one can put it out.”
-Bill Moyers, June 8, 2008
Scotty McClellan can come clean with a publishing deal, but neither God nor Paraguay will provide a GPS-less haven for rats trying to escape this stinking ship. McClellan’s revelation of the president’s responsibility behind the Valerie Plame affair has been treated as mere a reaffirmation that the perp was the only person legally allowed to out a CIA agent. But where is the press conference footage of Bush posturing about his determination to get to the source of the Plame leak?
If you’re indulging yourself gloating about Hillary’s dashed presidential aspirations, you might consider who’s cheering with you. As the battle for the nomination dragged on, Ms. Clinton faced near universal scorn, whipped up gleefully by all of media-dom. When has the media reported anything that you’ve discovered was truthful? Anything?
(Man’s traditional response to threatening women, midwives or healers? They’re witches!)
Unless you have been keeping in touch with Hillary Clinton personally, I would hesitate to say you don’t know if she has been represented objectively. Unless you’ve seen her in person, can you really say if her head’s the size of a pumpkin? Have you seen, heard, felt pangs of intuition that weren’t spun by the waves of an electronic transmission fashioned over an editor’s desk?
I’ve become rather suspicious that Ms. Clinton may have posed the biggest threat to the powers that be, to the beltway and the corporate media, and that’s why she was painted with such dastard derision.
Maybe?
The unanimity and height of disrespect shown in the catty ridicule made of Hillary has an identical scent really of an earlier smear campaign, the ulterior motives now well documented, against the embarrassment “beyond words” of Hillary’s First Husband, Bill.
President Clinton was too centrist for my taste, but it turns out he made some inroads for the people even despite being mostly thwarted by the corporate multinationals and the bankers.
Was the combined Clinton battle experience going to be crucial facing the still predominantly neoconservative-crony Washington establishment? The DC heavyweights are criminals and profiteers to the last, do we expect them to invite a reformer into the White House?
As much as they hated the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in her own right, the power brokers appear to be smitten by Barack Obama. What does that say to you?
Some think it’s a sign that everyone’s ready for change. Some think the Republicans are content to let a Democrat be left to pick up Bush’s pieces. A friend of mine quotes T. S. Eliot:
“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”
I think the vociferous appetite the Neocons have shown in devouring America’s treasury at the expense of the middle class indicates they don’t intend to leave even a piece until it’s in their bank account. The bad guys are not through. In these days of irradiation, they do not need their poultry kept live.
The media favoritism of Barack over Hillary says to me, they’ll abide a black man on their porch because they have no intention of letting him inside. They can serenade him even, confident they can excuse their ultimate inhospitality on the Appalachian problem. If American voters prove more progressive than they want, Diebold’s blackboxes will smite our great last hope.
Republican McCain has been criticized by none of the press. With Hillary out of the way, the press has already started to unleash on Obama, and will now be now free to lavish the erstwhile witch with the affection they now display for her term-limited husband.
America’s masters needed one heck of a ringer to face the Bush blow-back. A presumptive presumptuous first black president will prove just the straw man they need. Even the most cynical voter will not be surprised that white America is not ready to elect a black president.
All that hoopla about Obama needing to distance himself from his pastor’s unpatriotic rants was very telling. Do you remember Reverend Wright’s chief focus? God Damn America, yes, but his chief refrain? America’s racism. White America doesn’t want to believe it is racist, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
Apparently racism is gone if we want it gone. To decry its persistence is to break the self-hypnotic spell and bring racism back. Blame the messenger apparently.
It is not racist to predict that Obama faces entrenched racism. It would be swell to think America is otherwise, and the media would love for us to believe it. But they and the lobbyists and their owners Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Oil, the financiers and the war machine are banking on McCain.
The Wreligious Wrong who mis-advise Bush and now McCain have long been clear in their statements that the reason they back the State of Israel is because they believe that it will bring on the Apocalypse, and that the first people to be eaten by The Beast will be the Nation of Israel.
Mossad is one of the more efficient Assassination Bureaux Intelligence agencies in the world today, surely they know about this.
So many of the signatories to the PNAC are (technically) Jews that The Fat Stupid One (the one who tells the DittoHeads what they should say, do and believe) calls the very term “NeoCon” a Liberal Code Word for “Jew-boy” and it’s a form of hate speech.
That in itself is odd, that they would willingly align themselves with people who tell them (on the one hand) (and everybody else too) that they’re setting the Jewish State up for “the Big Fall” ushering in the End of Days… and on the OTHER hand boldly make plans for at least another century (pnaC) of their American (pnAc) dominance of the world, including the State of Israel.
That would be bad enough, it would send up so many red flags for me, personally, that I would see nothing but a sea of red cloth.
Then, even after it’s revealed that McSame is one of the Signatories, AND even though one of the more blatant and arrogant statements in the PNAC is that a plague tailor-made to strike Semitic peoples should be unleashed in the Arabian Peninsula…
Which is… oh, let me see… Oh, Yeah, where the State of Israel is physically located….
They STILL endorse McCain and his racist policies.
Do these jackasses believe for an instant that these Neo-Nazi freaks actually will keep them from going into the ovens, by licking their jackboots for them, selling them the very lives of their entire people?
That they somehow developed a love for those Jews who “go along to get along”?
What of their profession of either Christianity or Judaism? How do they think taking part in what’s planned to be the extermination of their families is going to play with G-d?
There’s a “Camp word” for their kind, LagerKapo. The ones who assisted the Nazis in the Final Solution.
Worse than the very worst of the Snitch-Bitch Warden’s Boy types in prisons around the world. The lowest level of Treason one can possibly attain.
And now the AIPAC is striving for that same “honor”…
Why is it that people who want to re-investigate the official 9/11 account are thought to be dragging their heels in the past, but publishing industry flag-wavers can trot out the orthodox 9/11 dogma every election cycle to repave America’s jack-boot stay-the-course resolve?
This week it’s Firefight, a book about the firefighting aspect of the still-veiled 9/11 attack on the Pentagon which destroyed Department of Defense offices which contained, of all darned things, their budget data. NPR’s Fresh Air featured an interview of the Firestorm co-authors, one of them a volunteer firefighter and Iraq veteran, with nary a question about the peculiarities of the Pentagon disaster, but plenty of evocative details. Jet fuel, plenty of it, spreading all over the roof, etc, etc. with nothing of bodies, aircraft parts, or unbroken glass, un-scorched lawns, no etcetera.
If I was a too-devious-for-my-own-good Neocon stink-tank thinkee at Presidio Press, I’d concentrate on a detail to make this story recall the audience’s own false-memory of the event. Being so clever I’d know that the most powerful memory trigger is smell. But how to reference a smell if everyone’s experience was primarily through television visuals -not even that, actually? Perhaps the suggestive power of radio could evoke the illusion of smell if enough radio land characters were to belabor its significance…
For the Pentagon story in Firefight, that detail would be “horse hair” in the ceiling insulation. Not only was this apparently a striking memory for the firefighters, but interviewer Terry Gross reaffirmed that America’s 2001 media audience had fixated on the curious detail as well. Had you?
Oddly today the subject didn’t lead to explanations about the use of horse hair insulation, or the impediment it might have created for firefighting. Nope, just the smell. On top, added the co-author, of the smell of all that jet-fuel don’t you know. Of course.
They’re hoping for our sense of smell-memory to kick in, because of course our sight-memory wasn’t there either. We have only print-news accounts to go by, the still photos themselves dispute the official story.
But there was video we didn’t see, and haven’t yet seen.
The book begins with a reference to the adjacent Citgo gas station, but not its cameras. Why did federal agents immediately confiscate all security camera video that had captured the incident and subsequently release only a couple seconds of footage that actually shows nothing? If an American readership is sought for this new book, by guys who’ve taken this long to do the research, would there be no interest in answering the predominant curiosity out there? Was it a jet that pierced the Pentagon?
The Firefight book is re-writing the emerging 9/11 narrative, re-branding, re-imprinting the 9/11 mythology for the election year John McCain Neocon reelection.
The reason for the timing of this coincidental to election year publication was that one of the authors was waylaid by a couple deployments to Iraq. Wonderful! An alibi AND a not-unsubtle tying of 9/11 to Iraq. Host Terry Gross preempted listener skepticism by asking what the soldier author thought of what’s been shown to be a debunked linking of Saddam Hussein to 9/11. His answer of course, a soldier’s duty to his nation’s call, regardless the leadership’s methods.
Throw in the author’s IED head-trauma injury that has left his memory impaired. Now he’s a wounded vet, deserving of our patronage, and his personally responsibility to these 9/11 untruths will be inoculated from the eventual debunking of this treasonous 9/11 lie.
What a thoroughly wrapped package! Unfortunately for the clever stinkers a not inconsiderable portion of the American public believe the Pentagon was hit by a missile, and their smell-memory is of fish.
This isn’t a Teflon administration. It’s Kevlar. We’ve seen Bushco take direct hits and drum on like the Energizer Bunny. This cabal is Timex, its lies blatantly unmasked, guns smoking, hands bloodied, but if it has a heart, its telltale beat is not pounding, just ticking.
As I fantasize of a 2009 comeuppance, congress submitting our ex-leaders before the International Criminal Court to face the consequences of their audacious crimes, I cannot help but question whether and how justice can be served. Where is the authority to bring these men to justice? Who and whose army is going to wrench Bush and co from their above-the-law protectors?
Even if the weight of national and international law enforcement can pull rank over the intelligence community and its private muscle, can we prevent a Ken Lay possum maneuver from stopping an investigation in its tracks? Who will be able to avert a freak accident where Bush and Cheney and the whole lot will be theatrically killed off, in reality to party on in Paraguay until maintaining a facade no longer matters?
While I worry about the loophole of a remote Patagonian haven for post-Nazi war criminals, if the media is collaborating, is actual exile even necessary? Heart attack victim Ken Lay could even now be living it up in Aspen and Cannes among jet-setters who enjoy the irony. If no news agency reports it, would we know? Even as we don’t hear it, we know the tree falls. Had Elvis been facing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit, or a war crimes trial, I might imagine an ignoble death on the toilet and an afterlife in Vegas drive-throughs would be a small price to pay.
If the Neocons are dethroned in November, and may I say I consider the prospect highly unlikely, they seem awfully powerful enough to carry on scot-free. America can’t even get Karl Rove to obey a subpoena. We can’t even get an independent inquiry into Bush’s pre-political driving records. The Carlyle Group will certainly be able to afford an expert to confirm that the DNA of a chimpanzee found slumped over the presidential excrement-incinerator porta-potty matches that of our dear-departed dope-in-chief. We’ll believe it, even as a simian look-alike paddles his mountain bike around vast East Coast and Texan estates.
Justice denied, I’ll not believe it, injustice will prevail, I doubt very much there will even be the illusion.
Do you remember this ignoble sequence of events in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq? America demanded Iraq cease their nuclear research projects, they did. We insisted they fess up about all their weapons programs, so they released a tower of documents, 75% of which we redacted before passing it on to the UN. We subjected Iraq to weapons inspectors, and called for Saddam to produce and dismantle his long range missiles. When the embargo-depleted, oft-bombarded nation complied, the way was clear for our troops to move in.
If a cowboy did that in a western, which color hat would he be wearing? Throw down your gun so I can shoot you.
Middle East scholar Steven Zunes recounted this episode in his presentation at CC on Thursday. Iraq’s early subjugation would certainly be influencing Iran’s current nuclear strategy. North Korea presented the alternate scenario. Their nuclear program moved forward undeterred, they tested long distance rockets, and they didn’t get invaded. Iran is governed by a repressive regime, but even Iran’s dissidents advocate rushing their nation’s nuclear efforts forward.
Stephen Zunes spoke about the ongoing war and The Mess Bush Leaves Behind, reminding the students of his originally dire predictions before the war started. He made the same point in his CC appearance the year before. In 2003 Zune had predicted failure in Iraq. Much as he would like to have been proven wrong, he says, we have failure. Still unchanged was the narrative that the US adventure in Iraq has been an unmitigated fiasco. The outcome is tragic, the irreversible destruction and loss of life, lamentable. But otherwise Zunes’ liberal theme is pernicious falsehood.
Bush’s history-making sure does look like a mess, but Neocon pocketbooks can only be described as messy in being flush with cash. When will analysts reframe the fiasco for what it still is, a continual mugging of the American taxpayer. Oil profits are up, the weapons industry has windfalls to rival cyclones, and private militia forces are outgrowing the democratic mechanisms to hold multinationals in check. Having a preeminent scholar characterize the GWOT developments as mistakes is to mislead Americans with criminal negligence.
What a fantastic development, to have Barack Obama unmasked still early into the election, bursting the giddy bubble which his fans regard as the change Obama offers from Centrism/Neoliberalism/Neoconartistry. Obama is not only denouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s statements. Obama is now telling Americans over-regulation is a problem, Obama is endorsing charter schools, Obama is conceding that some Republican policies are preferable to those of Democrats…
Can you dispute any of the pronouncements of Obama’s Reverend? Even rephrased by critics, I found these criticisms are unassailable, if uncomfortably spirited. Here they are presented in an accusatory article on Barack Obama: WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN?
Racism is alive and well. Racism is the American way.
Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.
No black man can ever be President.
No black woman will ever be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.
America is still the number one killer in the world.
We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training professional killers.
We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.
We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.
We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly
We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control we still put more money in the military than in medicine. More money in hate than humanitarian concerns.
We are selfish, self-centered ego egotists, who are arrogant and ignorant.
The second to last statement may be extreme, but what’s to argue? Whether CIA labs produced an AIDs virus to arrest the exploding populations of Africa, or whether our exploitive capitalism / polluting industrialism / callous militarism / usurious enslavement systems precipitated the genocide over lands from which the developed nations need resources but not people, are either less murderous?
One could split the same hairs about 9/11. Whether our government colluded with the hijackers to facilitate/exacerbate a false flag attack against the first world, or whether our world trade banking policies finally so enraged its victims to goad their desperate symbolic strike on our WTC, are we any the less responsible?
Reverend Jeremiah Wright is absolutely right about all these points. In the tradition of MLK not by coincidence. Barack Obama is being compelled by the corporate mainstream to distance himself from what the American public knows are truths, and all the better. Those of us who know we need a change can see that Obama isn’t going to be it.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
John McCain isn’t just a maverick TM, he’s that unfavored horse in the Kentucky Derby!
They made a movie about him. America’s favorite underdog, a Heratio Alger story, T-Bone Pickens, poor boy makes good, Beverly Hillbillies, overcoming odds, Everyman, a dog’s life, Because of Wynn Dixie, Benjie, Fire House Dog, Rudy, boy struggling against disability, custodian math whiz, Pay it Forward, Sling Blade (didn’t see either), Bad News Bears, Rocky, mongrel saves world, Ugly Betty, what was that damn horse’s name? Old Stewball?
McCain kisses Bush 18% approval Ass, embraces Neocon war fiasco as his own, dons Yarmulke despite growing brazenness of Israeli crimes, and eclipses Keating Five savings and loan corruption infamy. Try as he might, McCain can’t paint himself dumber than good ol’ boy, how-bout-a-beer, George Dubya. But it makes him look pretty dumb, doesn’t it?
The maverick label was a whole cloth invention and Rockford should take it back for trademark infringement. McCain is no more a lone maverick than he is the poor-boy candidate on CNN’s income comparison. McCain’s wife beer-heiress Cindy is worth 100 million. What’s the income/ dividend/ interest on that kind of fortune, and why isn’t it included on this joint income survey? Oh my goodness. Are you getting any sense that our media is going to represent the election with any honesty? If John McCain mounts a mechanized Trojan horse at polling stations in predominantly Democratic districts, and personally tramples black voters, are we going to hear about it?
COLORADO SPRINGS- Events took a shrill turn at the KRCC open house this weekend. My friend Dave got evicted from the party. If Dave can gather any consolation, I’d say he’s entitled to feel he did everything he could for the cause. Some would say a more gentle tact would have been more effective, but I think that wisdom is debatable for the 911 TRUTH keepers.
My friend Dave is a tireless advocate for the real story behind 911. He shares an ever-darkening hope -my sense- that if only the truth got out about what happened at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the whole Neocon ball of wax would melt like the towers, if steel can melt away like it did. Dave is so inflamed by the preposterousness of the lies supporting the official version of events, that he is determined to let no opportunity pass to raise his voice to cry foul.
Last Sunday, Dave’s chance was against Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, who came to visit KRCC. DN!, like its corporate news competitors, does not dwell on revisiting 911. Goodman has interviewed the makers of Loose Change, but that has been it. I remember the last time Goodman visited the Springs someone was trying to buttonhole her about 911. (It might have been Dave!) This time, Dave began shouting accusations of Goodman being a “gatekeeper,” as she walked to the stage, basically of her participation in the coverup of the Neocon equivalent of the Reichstag Fire. What can I say, I agree, but I’d rather hope there are bigger fish to heckle. But none really are accessible, are they? So Amy Goodman was Dave’s mark and he was determined to interrupt her speech sooner than wait his turn to ask her pointed questions in person.
What happened however, was that KRCC staff came to herd Dave away. They surrounded him, to quiet his tone and engage him, probably it’s fair to say, by distraction. But he evaded them, trying to get into a videographer’s camera angle. Eventually one of the smaller of the radio staff, a small woman, got in his face, and Dave was gesturing against her with his index finger and speaking with such ferocity that spit was flying. He didn’t purposely spit on her, but word went around that he had, and for the rest of the staff that was enough. Picking on a small woman is going too far, although no one noted that Dave is a pretty small guy himself. They were probably equally matched. But I can add that I’ve come against this woman myself, and she holds no punches when it comes to patronizing sarcasm.
But I am biased in a couple familiar matters. Number one, I can sympathize with being up against this radio staff who will positively broke no alternate view. They are rigid in their sense of what their role is in the community. They seek to generate no complaints. They fear listeners who complain about something being changed. Listeners who complain about something they’d like to see changed, are addressing nothing the radio station has done, the input is uninvited. If allowed to lead to change, most certainly it will generate counter complaints. Ergo, no go. Also, almost uniformly, the radio staff are uninterested in the complexity of news issues. They therefore have no empathy for those who would contend with their news.
I wondered if the radio staff saw the irony that by stepping in to stop Dave, they were being gatekeepers too. Probably they do not even understand the term. They are protecting their little non-profit, “like anything, we have to run it like a business,” and don’t want to jeopardize being able to do what they do. For them it’s enough to be somebody’s favorite little station, as opposed to fighting the good fight, or saving the world. In their own way, with music shows, they do that. But others, who see the potential of their power, guarded for official use only, see the guards as gatekeepers.
I don’t blame the radio staff for calling security on Dave, and I do believe they handled him as gently and as reasonably as they could. I only wish they might have shown some sympathy afterward, instead of treating him like a loon.
In a second fashion, I really feel for Dave. He’s up against everyone, and it’s not his fault. Dave has studied the evidence, he refuses to live in the darkness of a dark lie, and he wants to make the truth known. Who doesn’t want that? And so he has to break the surface, disrupt everyone’s tidy and comfortable world view. And when a newsperson with the capability to reach millions stops by in the flesh, Dave has to try to get to her conscience. It’s not like Amy Goodman has not studied the 911 controversy. It’s not like a private conversation would have enlightened her to an unearthed development. Dave had to haunt her like a telltale heart, and hope that at the next appearances someone else of like-minded 911 spirit would haunt her there. Until I suppose, she would resolve to broach the subject once more on the air, and again and again, until the truth was exposed. This is what I imagine to be Dave’s hope.
I have another friend in that camp, who was thankfully more civil, and came away thinking perhaps eventually Amy Goodman would be an ally. I had to agree. I speculated with him what might have been her answer to Dave, if she’d been forced to give him a candid answer, which no doubt she is not free to give.
Here’s what we figured Yoda would tell Dave:
Many are the 911 Truth seekers, but greater are the forces behind the official 911 Commission Report. The official channels, have they, and the institutions and the mouthpieces, and the means to present the truth tellers as crazy ill-mannered maniacs (you Dave). Even exploit the inevitably real crazies to full effect they can, and paint the rest by association. Not enough 911 Truth soldiers are there with which to mount an attack. But other battles to fight, there are. Throw our energies into those arenas, we must.
Someday historians will sort this out. The truth behind historic events is never for contemporaries to know. Knowledge is power. Are you in power? The real knowledge then, was not yours. Believe what you want, but suffer the fate of Galileo if you insist on trying to shake the system to its destruction. Galileo tried to put the very infallibility of the church to flame. Hard to blame them for threatening to burn him. Be satisfied with knowing.
Dave, I think you are right. I’m a far less audacious man than you. I’m not much of a friend when I can’t step in to support you, although I can try to explain afterward that you are neither crazy, nor dangerous. You are plenty rude, but you are a likable, well motivated person, looking out for the well being of all.
Democracy Now! heroine Amy Goodman will be visiting the Springs on Sunday April 20th, but you wouldn’t know from listening to DN!’s own local radio affiliate KRCC. Today, in the segue for the 7pm slot, “Coming up next, Democracy Now,” instead of mentioning Goodman’s upcoming appearance, the DJ added “if Amy Goodman is not your bag, check out KRCC’s HD2 on which you can hear The Thomas Jefferson Hour.”
Can you imagine KRCC introducing Fresh Air with Terri Gross like that?
On her last appearances, Amy Goodman filled the 900-seat Shove Chapel. Where do you suppose KRCC gets off thinking they can ignore her local following? It’s insulting enough that they gave DN! a mediocre time-slot, they’re trying to sabotage Goodman’s opportunity to speak to their listeners in person? No mention either on their calendar. Search their website for “Amy Goodman” and you get nothing!
Over the last few months, KRCC has promoted appearances by all sorts of Neocon conservative global-warming deniers and war profiteers. As recently as yesterday KRCC had uncritical promotion of ex-Interior Secretary and crook Gale Norton. What’s happening to Colorado College? What’s happened to KRCC?
He didn’t bring change as a Senator, nor has he offered change as a political voice. But Barack Obama is campaigning on a platform of change. Is campaigning all he can do?
That’s what we have already with the Bush presidency, making paid appearances to groomed audiences, selling the Neocon agenda. Obama’s agenda is the same “change” which George W. offered. Same financiers, same agents of change. Obama supporters are displaying the same aw shucks gleeful optimism as the Bush supporters did. Obama may be smarter, so maybe America will just be more smartly screwed.
I have to say I do think Barack Obama, or a Barack Obama, could not fail to do a novel job of campaigning for a new image of America. If the task at hand is not about curbing American imperialist ambitions, at least we could do a better job convincing the rest of the world that our expansive authority is in their interest. Obama may be a better pitchman considering he’s not directly one of the profiteers. But as a candidate, not being a shyster may be something else to stand in Obama’s way of not getting to be president.
I’m thinking of course of other obstructions, such as the corporate media and the corporate parties. By corporate I mean corrupted, the corrupt spokesmen, experts, soothsayers, pollsters, social engineers, spin doctors, psychological manipulators and enterprising hacks.
Asked in 2004 about Bush’s aptitude for the presidency, the talking point seemed to be: “he’s the best man for the job.” Cynically they didn’t have to address whether he was bright or competent or knowledgeable, only that he’d perform the job as intended. And they were right. Bush gave it up to the munitions industry. He delivered the Middle East to big oil. He transferred the wealth of the people of the United States into private hands, all the while looking fully incompetent and not the least suspiciously larcenous. The American public has yet to grow wise.
So who’s the best man for the job in 2008? We’re going to let them tell us again. A short fat white dude, last seen hugging George W. and kissing his ring. He’ll be the last white hope against the menacing half-black dude with no track record, indoctrinated in a madrasse, but strangely the best the Dems could come up with as an alternative.
There it is, the Neocon ensemble: black suit, red tie and US flag lapel pin, the mark of graft, greed, and audacious insincerity.
EPA Chief Stephen Johnson defended his decision today to deny California a waiver to set its own automobile emissions standards. (The progressive CAFE standards and the pending LCFS regulations.) His rationale? Climate change threatens no significant adverse effect on the state.
One of the greatest blogging joys is giving a post a title. I favor arcane, abstruse or esoteric titles, mainly because it’s fun to take disparate notions and weave them together, if only in the tapestry of my mind. I think obscure titles draw potential readers into what might be easily-ignored prose by eliciting in them the type of curiosity that would lead them to utter something akin to “what the hell does that mean?”
I wrote a recent post called Not my three cups of tea wherein I questioned the motives of Greg Mortenson’s supporters. The hagiography surrounding Mortenson, who had managed to build a few schools and co-write an incredibly crappy book, Three Cups of Tea, smacked of neocon propaganda.
However, upon finishing the book, I decided that without a doubt Mortenson was the bravest, most caring and compassionate soul on earth and, if there were any nefarious motives to be found, they were definitely not his. I felt a need to set things straight so I wrote a clarification and entitled it Polly put the kettle on, which seemed an obvious choice to me.
Apparently it was not obvious to others (Eric).
Polly Put the Kettle On was a rhyme written in 1797 by a father of five children, two boys and three girls. The boys liked to play loud and rambunctious games, while the girls played more quietly. When the girls had had enough of their brothers’ obnoxious ways, they would pretend they were going to have a tea party, an event that the boys would likely be required to attend. “Polly put the kettle on” was threat enough to send the boys running outside leaving the girls to talk and play in peace.
My title was meant to convey that I no longer wish to hear any noise about Greg Mortenson being a tool for the government or being an interloper in doing-just-fine-without-him Pakistan. I will chase you noisy boys (Eric) out the door so I can admire the intrepid and visionary man in peace.
See, I told you it was obvious.