This… reminds me…. of…. someone….

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 5:14 PM MDT No Comments 

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.
~~Leonard Cohen

The fate of millions was sealed the moment Dick Cheney selected himself as The Destroyer whose charge to keep for the next eight years would be — as Capitol Hill Blue’s Doug Thompson so succinctly described George W. Bush — a “criminally insane, pill-popping dry drunk.” I don’t know about that. I’ve seen some drunks in my time — even dry ones — and George Bush appears to be more than a little moist.

Bush was the perfect foil for Cheney. The Scalia-driven 2000 election coup catapulted Bush to the top of the political heap. For the first time in his worthless, impotent, cruelly indifferent life, Bush was suddenly important — the most powerful man on the face of the earth — and all because he had been told to scream, “Jezus! Jezus is my philosopher!” to the swooning masses. Makes one wonder at the rigid consent of those same “believers” for the ensuing slaughter of so many innocents — when murdering even one in the name of Jesus should have sent a collective shriek reverberating throughout the religious universe. (See Matthew 18:14; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2)

Everybody knows that Bush isn’t remotely qualified to be at the helm of the world’s superpower. He can neither think nor speak coherently, can recognize little other than Texas on a map, has completely torpedoed every business venture he attempted, and admittedly was a hard-partying sot until he was 40. Cheney was another matter. He was a household word. He had been a public servant throughout his career. He served as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, earned six terms in the House of Representatives where he ascended to the position of minority whip and, finally, was the elder Bush’s Secretary of Defense.

We trusted Cheney to keep Bush from making rash decisions. Was it not Cheney who, at the conclusion of the 1991 Desert Storm assault, made the assessment that to expand the exercise to include regime change in Iraq was not morally sustainable because of the chaotic bloodletting — the needless toll on our uniformed military?

We were wrong. Had we bothered to check the “other priorities” that allowed Cheney to dodge the draft five times on his rise to power, his chilling congressional voting record, his efforts to enrich the military industrial complex by privatizing defense duties and granting massive contracts to Halliburton, we would have known that Cheney was consumed with lust for power and money. We would have known Cheney had been champing at the bit for more than a decade to impose a new order wherein the American Empire controls the world and its resources.

Had we checked, we would have known Dick Cheney was the wrong babysitter for a kid who gets his jollies by blowing things up.

Cheney Unbound

In 1991, Cheney was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the upheaval of the following decade, the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, and the expanding manipulative power of the corporate media created the axis of corruption necessary for a Cheney reign of terror. Cheney was ready, as were the militant warmongers of the Project for the New American Century who had been demanding Saddam Hussein’s head for years. At least 12 of the 18 co-signers of the January 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton, and another letter four months later to then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, demanding the overthrow of Saddam were given key positions on Cheney’s destructive team.

The fix was in. Four days before the 2001 inauguration, PNAC’s deputy director, Thomas Donnelly, wrote a memorandum to “Opinion Leaders,” reminding them that “the task of removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power still remains…Many in the incoming Bush Administration understand this challenge…”

Four months after the inauguration, the White House issued a press release warning that the threat of terrorist-nations using weapons of mass destruction against the American “homeland” was very real. To counter this danger, Cheney put himself in charge of the entire government — departments of Defense, Justice, Health and Human Services, Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, FEMA, and “other federal agencies,” which would naturally include both FAA and NORAD. A new department — the Office of National Preparedness — was created so Cheney could protect us from catastrophic harm and deal with “consequence” management.

The next four months were busy ones. With malicious indifference, Cheney set about screwing the American people; destroying 225-year Constitutional protections, passing secret laws to seize unlimited executive power, and locking both Congress and the public out of the legislative process. Bush provided cover by regaling us with hilarious “Benny Hill” bits of linguistic derring-do, strutting from one presidential photo op to another, falling off couches and bicycles, choking on pretzels, and attacking brush with a chainsaw at his Crawford ranch.

Cheney in Charge

Then it was 9-11. Suddenly Bush was no longer a spoiled, bumbling, schizophrenic little president. In an instant, he was transformed into a loaded codpiece — The Commander in Chief, The Decider of life and death — a modern-day Caligula towering above mankind with lighted depleted uranium firecrackers gripped in both fists. Cheney could not have picked a more willing accomplice to export death and violence to the four corners of the earth…

With smoke still rising from the ashes of Afghanistan, the drive to topple Saddam, who was demanding Euro for his oil, quickly turned into a crusade. It was Cheney-orchestrated and Cheney-driven. Under the deepening shadows of mushroom clouds, administration neoconservatives teamed up with ecstatic corporate media co-conspirators to terrify an already traumatized public. Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith launched a separate intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, to create the propaganda needed to invade Iraq.

Since Bush can’t be trusted to maintain a single train of thought in one-on-one interviews, he hit the campaign trail with a prepared speech he delivered over and over — is now delivering about Iran — frantically catapulting the propaganda that Saddam was “threatening America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.” Bush convinced a majority of Americans that the Iraqi dictator was allied with Al Qaeda and provided a “safe haven” for terrorists, and if we didn’t wipe him out, he would “strike us again without leaving any fingerprints.”

Cheney’s fingerprints are all over every aspect of the drive for war. For a year and a half, Cheney bullied the entire intelligence apparatus, especially the CIA, into making a false case that Saddam was an immediate nuclear threat. He denigrated the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report that there was no evidence, sneering that the intelligence was faulty, and IAEA Director-General Mohammed El-Baradei had no credibility where Iraq was concerned.

But it was Secretary of State Colin Powell who rolled the loaded dice at the UN Security Council on February 8, 2003, in a presentation even he admitted was “bullshit.” Powell, who is adept at leaving no fingerprints, but whose shadow lingers over decades of slaughtered innocents, carried the water for his masters one last time. When Powell completed his somber charges that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq running “poison camps” full bore, that Saddam was obtaining magnets for uranium enrichment — charges backed up with photos and vials of poison — we were sold. Because we trusted him.

A Moral Fork in the Road

I don’t want to go off on an Aristotelian rant here, but thanks to Cheney and those around him obsessed with world government, this nation appears to be running on empty where morality, or ethos, is concerned. Values such as compassion, sympathy, prudence, virtue, decency, ethics — cannot thrive in a nation controlled by war criminals who force its citizens into submission through fear, violence and propaganda. How can a society be “just” when natural laws have fallen by the wayside and nobody is held accountable for crimes against God and humanity?

We are under the control of the criminally insane. Cheney has turned the greatest democratic republic ever conceived into a world corporation and anointed himself its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He has supplanted two centuries of protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights with executive orders and secret laws. In their lust for power and riches, Cheney and Bush have managed in just seven grueling, sadistic, morally corrupt years to destroy entire nations, including their own. And they accomplished this in the only way possible. Because we permitted it. Because we lost our moral compass.

So we stand here in the blood-sodden mess of two lost wars. Millions — millions — have been displaced, destroyed, dishonored in Cheney’s quest for oil. Tens of thousands of our own citizens are injured, maimed — 4,077 dead — an entire generation of Americans lost in a depleted uranium wasteland. “So?” Cheney says, “They were all volunteers.” He admitted that losing sons or daughters could “be a burden” on families, but reminded us sternly that “the biggest burden” is on the President, who has to send even more to their deaths.

We’re at the crossroads. We can no longer remain neutral nor mill around in confused acceptance of the genocidal madness into which we have been swept. Thomas Jefferson said, “When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”

Everybody knows the folly of the treasonous “corrections” made to counter the Iran-Contra evil in the 1980’s and early ’90’s — the flurry of Presidential Christmas-Eve pardons allowing convicted criminals to recede into the shadows only to return and metastasize throughout the current Cheney/Bush administration.

Cheney, Bush and their co-conspirators throughout the three branches of government must be removed. Indicted. Convicted. Imprisoned. Voting records of the 435 members of Congress and 33 Senators up for re-election in 2008 must be vetted, and those who do not reflect the will of the people must go. No exceptions. The remaining 17 Senators must either stand or fall on their voting records. If those who are guilty of the same breach of trust as their cohorts refuse to budge, they must be impeached and removed from office.

They have left us with but one choice, and one last chance to make that choice. We have reached a point in the “course of human events” where it is not only our “right but our duty” to throw off this destructive government and institute one which remembers it “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The time has come for Americans to blink. Because the Abyss is staring back at us.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Guest Bloggers, Politics at 11:18 PM MDT No Comments 

That’s how many times spammers have tried unsuccessfully to post spam to my comments.

FAIL.

They keep trying to spam me at my e-mail address too.

I report it via SpamCop and they get busted in under a minute.

You’d think they’d learn.

Spamming an address in the ’spamcop’ domain has to rate right up there with sniffing glue.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Humor, Life, etc., Musings at 10:24 PM MDT No Comments 

by Mary Pitt

In this life there is one immutable truth. It is that there will be change, whether or not we may approve or desire that change. At this time, there is no place where this is more true than in the battle for the presidency of the United States. The people whom we thought we knew now appear to us as something different than we ever expected from their past performances.

We hear of concerns about the possibility of a “split” in the Democratic party as the result of the no-holds-barred contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. If this is true, it is not necessarily the fault of the people involved but may be due to the failure of the American public to recognize how severely bifurcated the party has become as the result of the tension created between the desire to consider the welfare of the working class and the desire to win dominance in the halls of government.

As the Democrats continue to jockey for power and privilege they find the voters to be less than compliant with their carefully-laid plans. Most apparent of this syndrome is the campaign of Senator Clinton. Being distrustful of her party’s ability to prevail over the opposition, she determined to attempt to appeal to their base in order to beef up her own support. This has been simple for her, inasmuch as her internship in the political field was in the camp of former Republican conservative, Barry Goldwater. Actually, she boasts of her days as a Goldwater Girl.

However, her political leanings were challenged by her relationship with a certain up-and-coming young man named Bill Clinton, who later served two terms as an acceptable Democratic governor and President. Once the White House days were over, she determined to pursue her own political career and availed herself of her husband’s support within his party. But some of us wonder, as she makes her appeal to the Reagan Democrats if her indoctrination under the master conservative might still be directing her thinking as to policy as well as to talking points. One might also speculate as to whether her husband’s firm friendship with the senior President Bush has any bearing on her political changes.

As Senator Obama trudged along in the path of a traditional Democrat in pursuit of the impossible dream, the improbable candidate found himself being damned by association with one of the heroes of the civil rights movement, one who is known to have associated with and to still be fond of those social warriors from that struggle. These connections are to really scarey people, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, jr, Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan, the Black Panthers, and the Weather Underground, et al. All of these people and the events in which they participated, by the way, are largely responsible for the fact that we not only got out of Vietnam but have reached the point where a man of color can actually have a chance of becoming our President.

However, even with the “radical preacher” tied about his neck like an albatross, Obama labors on, reaching out to the working class and the poor who are struggling greatly in this time of Bush-o-nomics. We will soon know whether he can reach enough of them with his understanding and care to get them to swallow the last of their inbred racism and support him in his contest or whether the old instincts will compel them to swing to the right and vote Republican-lite due to the racial animus aroused by the words of somebody else.

In any event, the winner of this contest will face another race against another “changeling” whose ambition has wreaked horrendous changes in him. A man who cherished his reputation as a maverick, who had steadfastly refused to march in lockstep with the Neo-Cons and the religious right has courted both factions and adopted the attitude of the Bush administration as well as the no-taxes-no-welfare program of the super-right and the continuation of the war in the Middle East into the future without foreseeable end. To listen to Senator John McCain parrot the words of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney is to wonder whther he has lost his mind or whether we have. Or perhaps this change is prompted by the fact that his previous positions have been co-opted by Senator Clinton in her effort to capture “the middle of the road”.

In any event, to paraphrase Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “It’s not God bless America, it’s God SAVE America!”

The author is a very “with-it” old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for “societal perfection”.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Guest Bloggers, Politics at 10:20 PM MDT No Comments 

Great review of Arianna Huffington’s new book: Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe.

Read the review now at Firedoglake.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 4:22 PM MDT No Comments 

by Mary Pitt

I am constantly amazed at the obscure details that politicians will dig up to cast aspersions upon the personal lives of their opponents in order to keep the people from looking at the issues. Lately we are being exposed to the “Preacher Scandal” where each candidate is expected to tell their pastor to just shut up!

The good Rev. Wright is drawing fire, much of which is singeing Senator Barack Obama, because he is a prime example of what a black pastor is expected to be, an oratorial firebrand who inspires his people to hope for freedom and equality. In return, people are looking askance at Senator John McCain for accepting the endorsement of the radical fundamentalist ministers who are cheering on our wasteful Middle East war in the hope for Armageddon

The mainstream media is having a field day with this minutia while parading “experts” on both politics and religion across our screen. Hours of air time are spent on this trivia while the soldiers keep dying in Iraq, the criminality of the Pentagon policies, the brutal treatment, not only of our prisoners, but of our “all-volunteer” servicewomen, is conveniently swept under the rug and onto the back pages of the newspapers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, homes are being foreclosed by predatory lenders, gasoline prices are in the stratosphere, and the cost of even food has become prohibitive. Meanwhile, the small amount of money that is left in the pockets of the working class is being rooted out to pay for health care, medications, and the very basics of life in order to enrich still further the corporate thieves in the board rooms. Those scoundrels are aware that their time is short and they must gouge all they can from the working class before the current administration leaves office and their gravy train ends.

What will stop this debacle of democracy when the new administration leaves office? It is almost impossible to find out, since nobody is talking about the issues. We know that Senator Hillary Clinton can put on a phony rural accent on command and that Senator Barack Obama is an accomplished wordsmith, but what will they DO to correct the course of our nation? Both have tiptoed around the health issues, speaking of “tax credits” “help with paying insurance premiums”, but it is indefinite and brings to mind comments about “treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease”.

None of them have even mentioned the Presidential signing statements and executive exceptions which have slammed the door to “open government” and effectively neutered the Congress and the courts. Would any of the candidates continue that policy? Who knows?

Plans to leave Iraq are “off the table” for McCain and amorphous in the proposals from the Democratic candidates. McCain wants to ameliorate the pain of gas prices by suspending the taxes paid at the pump at the risk of further deteriorating highways. Hillary Clinton suggests a “windfall profits” tax on corporations but Barack Obama is too busy defending himself from the charges against Pastor Wright to develop any plan at all that we have heard.

It would seem that the American voter would have the discernment to realize which way the smoke is blowing and to shout, “Enough!” This whole tragicomedy of a political campaign has descended into farce as the the “pundits” mis-speak and mis-quote. The speeches in question were not “sermons” delivered in his Chicago church as depicted by Chris Mattews and others, but speeches delivered at conferences and meetings of black leaders. If Obama had been sitting in that pew for every Sunday of his twenty-year membership, he would have heard none of them!

But we have all heard Jerry Falwell and John Hagee and their pronouncements about the wrath of God as the reasons for each of the disasters that have befallen our country as well as the other calls from the Fundamentalist pastors of divine retaliation for our failure to embrace their faith. They do not ask for God to damn America but tell us that He already has! We should pay no more attention to the professional rantings of Pastor Wright than we do to those of the Fundamentlists and get on with the process of choosing the next leader of out nation. If we must pray for something, let it be that we still have a nation to govern in January, 2009.

The author is a very “with-it” old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for “societal perfection”.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Guest Bloggers, Life, etc., Politics, Religion at 6:10 PM MDT No Comments 

Oh yes, this guy will make a great president

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 8:36 PM MDT No Comments 

From Rush Limbaugh’s drug arrest in 2003.

Transcribed from the arrest records.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Humor, Musings, Politics at 4:05 PM MDT No Comments 

by Mary Pitt

Liberals, can you read the writing on the wall? The American people are being set up again. Hillary Clinton, with the assistance of the same old political tactics and the same old political mainstream media pundits has become the Come-Back Kid! Watch her march to the White House in triumph as she and her husband retaliate for the humiliation of having left it in shame. She will persuade the super-delegates of her party to end the Obama challenge and then walk all over poor old John McCain to once again take control of the government. And, once again, we will see the famous Clinton “compromise and coalition”.

But Hillary is not Bill. We must bear in mind the Republican roots of Senator Clinton. She still carries the thought processes of the Goldwater Girl of the 1960’s and she easily slides into compliance with the Republican mindset. Early in the campaign, when the true Liberals were discussing the health crisis and pushing for universal single-payer health care, Ms. Clinton offered her proposal for mandatory insurance, (a Romney program), which is nothing more nor less than the same kind of insurance company rip-off as is Medicare Part D. When others were demanding withdrawal from Iraq, she was saying that we will have to stay indefinitely “in order to protect our Embassy”.

Since the Reagan years Americans have been pummeled by wars, threats, and mental abuse by successive administrations until we want only to make it stop. Many voters look back on the ‘nineties with nostalgia as a time of relative peace and prosperity. In that light, another Clinton presidency looks like Valhalla. However. one has to wonder whether they or Ms. Clinton even understand the extent of the damage that has been wrought by the “executive orders” and the “signing exceptions” of our current President. Nobody has asked her or Obama how they would countermand those actions and restore daylight to the machinations of the White House. Could this be corrected only by order of the president, as they were established, would they require action by Congress or would review by the Supreme Court be necessary to open the records which would expose the cronyism and payoffs by this administration?

On this, the morning after, one might suffer vertigo from watching the pundits spin! The Republicans appear elated that Clinton won Pennsylvania and are engaged in an orgy of devouring Senator Obama and his wife. They adopt the Clinton charge of “elitism” and accuse them of “being out of touch with the American people”. Listening to MSNBC’s Joe, Mika, and Tucker as they claim that the Obamas do not have the “common touch” is another instance of walking through the looking glass. For these privileged people to complain that a black American couple who have, through education, become sufficiently successful and articulate to become potential occupants of the White House appears beyond their comprehension. Strange that this mindset did not afflict them when Condaleezza Rice, who is truly from a wealthy family, assumed her position in the Bush administration.

There is a message connected to this event and that is that no radical improvement in our state of governance is likely. Even if Obama should win the nomination, the scurrilous charges by Senator Clinton will be adopted by the Republicans as their own spin machine propels John McCain into the leadership and the Neo-Cons continue to operate under his cover. If Senator Clinton should continue her recovery and reach the White House, it will be little better as she can be expected to deal “across the aisle” and gain a half a loaf.

Truly, these are depressing times for the Liberal Populist as the goal of a truly democratic society fade into memory with no sign of restoration. The Way We Have Always Done It wins again.

The author is a very “with-it” old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for “societal perfection”.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Guest Bloggers, Politics at 8:59 PM MDT No Comments 

Good grief, this isn’t a comic, it’s what ought to be on the news.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Life, etc., Politics at 11:04 PM MDT No Comments 

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/04/the-lincoln-dou.html
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)
by publius
Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held this debate on April 16, 1858 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
MODERATORS:
CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC NEWS
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS

MR. GIBSON: So we’re going to begin with opening statements, and we had a flip of the coin, and the brief opening statement first from Mr. Lincoln.
LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.
We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?
LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

LINCOLN: Eight.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Proceed.
LINCOLN: In my opinion, slavery will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?
LINCOLN: When I was a boy in Illinois forty years ago, yes. I think he was a deacon.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you aware that he regularly called Kentucky “a land of swine and whores”?

LINCOLN: Sounds right — his ex-wife was from Kentucky.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why did you remain in the church after hearing those statements?
LINCOLN: I was eight.
DOUGLAS: This is an important question George — it’s an issue that certainly will be raised in the fall.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce him?
LINCOLN: I’d like to get back to the divided house if I may.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him?
LINCOLN: If it will make you shut up, yes, I denounce and reject him.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him with sugar on top?
LINCOLN: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No takesies-backsies?
LINCOLN: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Whoa, so you would consider a takesie-backsie?
LINCOLN: That’s not what I meant–

DOUGLAS: When I was 11, my grandpappy and I chopped wood and shot bears.
LINCOLN: Ahem, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect slavery will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you love America this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?
LINCOLN: I think we covered this–

GIBSON: If I may interrupt–

LINCOLN: Please.
GIBSON: I noticed, Mr. Lincoln, that your American flag pin was upside down.

LINCOLN: Yes, the wind caught it. Now, as I was saying…
GIBSON: We get questions about this all the time over at Powerline and on Hannity’s talk show. Mr. Douglas has said this is a major vulnerability for you in the fall. So I’ll ask again — do you love America?

LINCOLN: (scowling with a forced smile). Yes.
GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?
LINCOLN: (pausing with disgust and turning back to camera) Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
DOUGLAS: He didn’t answer the question, Charlie. This fall, that question is going to be on the minds of the American public. I’ve proudly stated that my love for America is Very Berry Strawberry.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask it another way. If Elijah Johnson were chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, would you eat it? Or would you decline to eat it?
DOUGLAS: Personally, as for me, I would decline to eat it.
LINCOLN (shaking his head): Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery, so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ll get to Dred Scott in the second hour, time willing, but I want to get back to the ice cream question. And that’s what we’ll do, after the break.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Life, etc., Politics at 9:10 PM MDT No Comments 

This would be funny if it weren’t so damn sad.

Posted by macguiguru as Clips, Discuss!, Politics at 6:26 AM MDT Comments Off

By Sheila Samples

My friend Bernie says he can’t believe the American people haven’t figured out what it’s all about. “The whole damn political scene is nothing but a corporate media freak show,” he said. “There’s no breathing room between elections — no time nor interest in investigating, or even addressing, issues that are critical to our survival as a nation. The minute every last dollar is sucked out of the competition, the candidate who bought the most attack ads — the most face time — wins, and the election is over. Then,” Bernie said with disgust, “it’s time to start raising money for the next election, because the media is already out there campaigning.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. “But, surely electing a president is more important than the media, or who can raise the most money –”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Bernie said flatly. The mainstream media, both print and electronic, are as important as the American people allow them to be. And we’ve allowed them total control over our thoughts, our beliefs. They’re freaks — actors whose role is to divert national attention, manipulate public opinion, and keep the public in a state of suspended paralysis. They’re bullhorns for corporate Boss Hogs and administration creeps who are determined to seize power and keep the military industrial complex rolling in dough.”

Bernie’s right. With each presidential campaign, the list of candidates — serious candidates — grows shorter, and the media grow more brazen in either trashing or ostracizing those who pose a threat to the corporate status quo. The media is determined to choose the president no matter what voters want. Little by little, the media has inserted itself into the process until elections are no longer about candidates or issues. They’re about the media and what the media thinks about candidates and issues.

If you doubt that, check out CNN’s 24/7 “Ballot Bowl 08″ with Wolf Blitzer and “the best political team in television,” stumble into America’s Election Headquarters over at the Foxhole’s “Strategy Room,” spend a rollicking evening in MSNBC, “The Place for Politics,” where you can watch Chris Matthews throw his hard balls at Hillary, listen to Keith Olbermann scold all those who disagree with him, or just relax and let M.C. Rove’s dancing partner, David Gregory, decide the winner in his new “Race for the White House” show…

The One World Order criminals who seized power in the 2000 election coup will not exit peacefully if defeated in November. They have ruled through brutality and fear and, with the eager help of the media, stoked that fear into seven long years of shameful “patriotic” panic. Their eyes are on the prize — total US dominion and control of the world and its resources. They’re in too deep to back off now, and will not willingly accept defeat. The person taking over the reins of leadership from Bush must be one of their own, regardless of party. That is why the media relentlessly ambushed, weeded out, and tossed six of the eight Democratic presidential wannabes unceremoniously aside.

From the outset, the only two Democratic candidates in the media race were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The media and their corporate masters knew the hokey soap opera between a white woman and a black man would keep the masses panting for more “American Idol” drama and their attention diverted from more pressing matters, such as a landscape strewn with body parts, a desert stained red with innocent blood, dead and suffering children, grieving, horror-shocked parents on the one side — and a smirking idiot madman on the other who chants mindlessly about “completing the mission…spreading freedom throughout the world…”

In their critical “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin warned that we are immersed in times of moral and cultural degradation wherein “rulers of great evil have inflicted incalculable suffering on humanity.”

The book is less about Bush 41 or the Bush family than it is “an unveiling of the abuse and misuse of power, the shenanigans of egotism running rampant in high places.” The authors strip aside the “curtain of secrecy, myopic journalism, and the illusion of a ‘free’ press,” and stress that we must be “fully aware of the propaganda of the ’spin doctors’ and the manipulations that benefit a few at the expense of the many.” Tarpley and Chaitkin say we “are not to condone or advance this egoistic behavior, but to stand tall and say no to those who claim power.”

Many more of us than the media will admit are doing just that — from the courageous “Winter Soldiers” who stood up against the war machine last week, to the masses whose protests and arrests are blacked out by the media, to the growing numbers who speak truth to power on the Internet and on progressive radio. Fortunately, there are far too many to list, but if you’re just waking up, and it’s sheer, raw truth you’re after, check out Chris Floyd anytime, or listen to Nova M Radio’s Mike Malloy week nights from 9-midnight (EST).

Nebraska’s Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says in his new book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” that it’s time for independent leadership and, perhaps, even for another political party. I agree. Those like Dick Cheney who have a death grip on power, and who will only tighten that grip if they remain in power, do not care what the American people think. White House press secretary Dana Perino echoed Cheney’s sentiments last week when she told a reporter the American people have a right to speak only once every four years. After that, they can just shut up and follow the leader…

The current election is possibly the most important in US history. Yet, ironically, thanks to the media, few of us in either party have a horse in this race. We have one last chance to change that. We must stand together and support a candidate whose love for country overshadows party loyalty and media sound bites — a candidate who will fight for the freedoms and rights bestowed upon us by the founding fathers — who will work to restore our infrastructure and our environment. That candidate is former Vice President Al Gore, the man legally elected President of the United States in 2000. It’s time to heal the wound and move on to the Inauguration.

Together, we must ask Al Gore to answer the call one last time. If it takes a new party, so be it. Because saving our republic, repairing our Constitution, and returning the power to the people is what it’s all about.

Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Guest Bloggers, Politics at 9:38 PM MDT Comments Off

Word from Winkler
(From Faith in action - News and views from the United Methodist Board of Church and Society)

Anniversary of a moral disaster

By Jim Winkler, General Secretary, General Board of Church & Society

This week — Holy Week — begins a sixth year of war in Iraq. President Bush has no intention of bringing the military occupation of Iraq to a close. Last week, for example, Reuters quoted the President as telling U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where they have been deployed even longer than Iraq, that he is “a little envious” of them.

“I’m a little envious,” Bush said during a teleconference. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.

“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.”

The President will bequeath this unholy mess to his successor.

The President will bequeath this unholy mess to his successor. The leading Republican candidate for the nomination, Sen. McCain, has no intention of ending the war if he is elected President. And, it remains uncertain what Sens. Clinton or Obama would do if either is elected, although they have both stated they plan to end the war.

Yet the cost of the war in both dollars and human lives keeps rising to alarming levels.

The Lancet, a leading British medical journal founded in 1823, estimates 655,000 more Iraqis died than would have otherwise from the beginning of the invasion in March 2003 to July 2006. How did these Iraqis die?: 340,000 died from gunshot wounds, 78,000 from air strikes, 84,000 from mortar fire and other ordinance, 76,000 from car bombings, 55,000 from preventable disease and lack of access to health care, 12,000 from unknown violent causes, and 12,000 from accidents attributable to violence.

The Lancet numbers, which are based on proven survey methods, have been criticized by war supporters who prefer a far smaller body count be reported. In any case, we know that many more Iraqis have died since July 2006.

They lamented, though, the excessive use of force, and the fact their government placed them in such a hopeless situation.

I recently listened to presentations made by U.S. military personnel that have returned from Iraq. Repeatedly, they described incidents in which indiscriminate and overwhelming military firepower was used against the Iraqi populace. The military personnel pointed out that with their own lives in danger it should not be surprising combat troops use every means to protect themselves. They lamented, though, the excessive use of force, and the fact their government placed them in such a hopeless situation.

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes project the final cost of the war for the United States will be some $3 trillion. It costs $16 billion a month to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every U.S. household effectively contributes $138 each month toward this expense. By 2017, the U.S. will have paid $1 trillion in interest on the money borrowed to pay for the war.

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has received more than $19 billion in war-related contracts so far. Equally outrageous is the fact that the U.S. Defense Dept. has lost track of billions and billions of dollars and thousands and thousands of weapons.

The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) is still clearing out a backlog of cases dating from the Vietnam War, which ended three decades ago. Today, the VA has become hopelessly overextended due to the physically and psychologically wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. We will be paying for these veterans in many different ways for decades to come.

The money spent on this fruitless military endeavor could have been spent so much more productively.

The money spent on this fruitless military endeavor could have been spent so much more productively:

The Iraq war has disrupted oil production in Iraq. It has led directly to increased gasoline prices in the United States and around the world. That, in turn, has a direct adverse effect on the budgets of our states, cities, families and churches.

Because the savings rate in the United States is zero, the money has to be borrowed overseas. China is financing the war. The U.S. financial position in the world has dramatically declined.

The intelligent course of action from a military and economic standpoint would be to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan as rapidly as possible. This would enable investment in infrastructure and human resources both in the United States and around the world.

This is a moral disaster. It is the result of colossal misjudgments and mistakes. Few have been held accountable, though.

As best I can tell, few of our clergy or lay leaders say anything against the war. Maybe this is because of fear or misguided patriotism or a desire to avoid ruffling feathers. And, it may well be they will not be held accountable for their silence as long as they walk on the earth. I’m not so sure, however, they will avoid judgment in the life to come.

Date: 3/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
©2005-2008

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Life, etc., Politics, Religion at 8:00 PM MDT No Comments 

Delta to cut 30,000 jobs

Good grief.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts for Wall Street, Bear and Stearns, Subprime scandal, panic adjustments to the interest rates - this is fiscal responsibility?

I thought the GOP were supposed to be good businessmen. Oh, wait, the CEOs still got rich.

Now I understand.

I keep forgetting the little people don’t really matter.

Hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 12:16 AM MDT No Comments 

One of my very first favorites, his books opened up a new world for me. I grieve for the world’s loss.

Godspeed sir.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Life, etc., Musings at 5:52 PM MDT No Comments 

My pal Todd blogged about it.

It’s all over the news.

If you don’t know, Gary Gygax along with Dan Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons. D&D was the original role-playing game that led to ALL the others, yes, even HALO.

The man touched more lives than I can imagine.

His legacy lives on.

Thanks Gary. Thanks Dan. You guys changed my life and brought me all my dearest friends.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Life, etc., News at 12:30 AM MST No Comments 

Sockpuppet Operating Instructions

(hat tip to Prometheus 6 and Dream and Hustle.com)

Good info.

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 11:41 PM MST No Comments 

Real genius.

Stephen Colbert by Todd Lockwood.

Let freedom ring!

Posted by macguiguru as Art, Discuss!, People, Photos, Politics at 1:33 AM MST No Comments 

From Bob Geiger at The Agonist:

To Those Who Question Obama’s “Legislative Accomplishments”

By Bob Geiger (all emphasis by mdw)

When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews lit into Barack Obama supporter (and Texas State Senator) Kirk Watson during Tuesday night’s election coverage for not being able to list Obama’s “legislative accomplishments,” you would have inferred from his ferocity that Matthews was on the verge of cracking a major story.

While Matthews stopped short of waterboarding Watson to get a response, he kept at him no less than eight to ten times over the next few minutes, sneering “You have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president, you’re on national television — name his legislative accomplishments.”

Clearly without experience in appearing with Matthews and obviously without sufficient background on the recent dynamics in the United States Senate, Watson did indeed look more nervous than Mike Huckabee at a Planned Parenthood rally and failed to respond both in answering the question and, on behalf of the Obama campaign, shutting down the very premise.

No doubt, Watson — and anyone acting as an Obama campaign surrogate — should be able to rapidly list the important issues that the Illinois Senator has championed. This includes the Lugar-Obama legislation that has helped decrease the threat of old nuclear, biological, and chemical weapon in the former Soviet Union and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 which Obama co-authored and that led to USAspending.gov, which keeps Americans better informed on government spending.

Obama has also been very active in legislation to end the Iraq war and the much-heralded Dignified Treatment of Wounded Warriors Act, which passed in July of 2007 and addressed the hideous treatment received by Veterans under the Bush administration, began its legislative life as the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act, introduced by Obama earlier in the year.

But here’s the thing that any person going on television to represent Obama should repeat without end — and that should also be a part of the Obama campaign’s standard playbook: No Democrat, including Senator Hillary Clinton has been able to do one hell of a lot that meets the accomplishment benchmark of “passed legislation” in a time of unending, record-setting Republican obstructionism.

Obama has been in the Senate for three years, two of which were spent with a Republican majority that would not even let legislation sponsored by Democrats reach the floor for a vote and, on the few occasions where Bill Frist granted such a luxury, Republicans shot down most Democratic initiatives with extreme prejudice.

In the current (110th) Congress, the Republican minority has blocked everything but the Senate chaplain’s morning prayer and is on pace to by a wide margin filibuster more legislation than any Senate in U.S. history.

And there’s the answer that the Texas state senator should have given on Tuesday night in response to Matthews’ badgering. He should have been able to list just a few of Obama’s legislative efforts but, far more importantly, he should have been in tune enough with the national legislative scene to say “Chris, have you been watching the U.S. Senate the last few years?”

He could then have gone on to discuss how Republicans have had a significant Senate majority for most of this young century and, during the brief periods Democrats have held a razor-thin edge, the GOP has made damn sure that the Democratic side of the aisle has no “legislative accomplishments” to hang their hats on in election years.

As for the Obama campaign, I support your guy and I’ll give you this statement for free as you will certainly need it when Republicans begin lobbing charges of zero legislative accomplishments that will make Matthews look like an Obama groupie.

“Senator Obama knows that the American people are smart enough to see that the Republican party has become committed to doing nothing but blocking legislation that would help the American people and restore our nation to a place of esteem in the world. And they’ll further reject Republican claims that any Senator has not passed enough legislation when the GOP has made it their life’s work to see that no legislation is allowed to pass.

“More than anything, this demonstrates why a new kind of politics is necessary in Washington and why the American people are ready to turn the page and see all of us begin to accomplish more.”

Lather, rinse and repeat.

Oh, and you may want to give a copy of this to your campaign’s supporters before they appear on national television.

Bob Geiger February 22, 2008 - 10:56am

Posted by macguiguru as Discuss!, Politics at 12:44 PM MST No Comments