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Islamic Fascists? Huh?

Islamic Fascists? Huh?

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I am very impressed with the Brits. Thank you, Lionheart, for protecting all those who fly between the U.K. and the U.S. Thank goodness there are still good minds working somewhere.

Here’s an odd thing, though. I was out of town and I just happened to catch the President reacting to this situation by saying that we are “at war with Islamic Fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” It’s my understanding that most of the people involved in this plot were actually British citizens?

Anyway, what caught me as being particularly unusual was the linking of “Islamic” with “Fascists.” Huh?

I mean, “what? come again?” I don’t think that means what he thinks it means.

Unless I’ve missed some very important new development, there is no real fascist streak involved in any of the militant Islamic fringe-groups. There are lots of other things that can be said about them, of course.

However, since we are the ones who are melding corporations with government, that is a really really strange thing for him to say. I haven’t heard anyone challenge the statement either.

Of course, it was to be expected that the Republicans would use this to try to make themselves look like something they’re not and to somehow imply that if Democrats were in charge, we’d all be in danger. They’re calling Lamont a radical now. Sheesh. Sickening, but predictable.

I’m sick of the whole thing, and am really thinking a lot lately about systems that have more parties. If we have three or four or five parties instead of the “2 plus other” then coalitions would have to be formed, cooperation would have to take place to get anything done. Maybe we’d even get more people who would represent the interests of actual segments of our population.

As it is now, it seems that corporations are able to throw much of their tax burden on the population at large while at the same time bribing our representatives in various ways to represent their interests, even to the point of determining our energy policy, and writing our laws, and getting their own people placed in what used to be watchdog positions.

Funny how more and more and more people hate us and want to kill us since Bush took office. Maybe for some of them it’s about our freedom – although there it would seem they have common cause with the anti-toleration pseudo-christian right in America who also consider our culture to be a decadent “whore of babylon.”

I think it would help enormously if we started acting more like the good guys who could responsibly represent freedom and liberty and justice. Perhaps the situations that have begun to cascade rather exponentially now might still he slowed and halted, even turned around, if America took a good look at reality and started acting like a grownup.

There are better paths than this one into which we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated. We’re finally sensing it. If we’re going to conserve the very things that we say we value, we had best get to it soon. The damage to our national soul is already substantial.

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

People For the American Way believes that “a healthy democracy is an informed democracy,” so they have created WikiThePresidency.org to establish a single place for the public to both acquire and share information about Executive Branch wrongdoings.

It’s a Wiki, so anyone can edit the site, but there are rules. You must post factual claims (no op-eds), with links to credible supporting material. No spouting off.

Take a look. It’s interesting reading.

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

Galbraith Foresaw

Galbraith Foresaw

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“Corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy – and the slaughter in Iraq.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, a towering figure in the intellectual landscape of the 20th century, died Saturday at the age of 97. Born in Canada, he moved to the States when Roosevelt was President – and he stayed here. He was an economist, author, professor, frequent presidential counselor, U.S. ambassador to India, editor of FORTUNE magazine (1943–48), and was the driector of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. He foresaw what has now happened in America. He was insightful, eloquent, and witty – and had that rare talent of being able to express his ideas in ways that non-academics could understand. He had rural roots and a moral imperative: the common good. His lectures (for some 25 years at Harvard professor) routinely drew standing-room-only audiences. He authored some 40 books and was granted some 50 honorary degrees.

He warned that corporations were becoming too powerful. His famous 1958 work “The Affluent Society” argued that while market forces could produce great wealth, it was at a social and environmental cost that wasn’t so obvious. More specifically, while the American economy produced wealth, it did not adequately address public needs such as schools – it did not meet the social contract in proportion to its wealth. Overproduction of consumer goods was already harming the public sector and depriving Americans of such benefits as clean air, clean streets, good schools and support for the arts. An unfettered free market system and capitalism without regulation would fail to meet basic social demands.

The New Industrial State (1967) argued that the rise of giant multi-national corporations had also created a bureaucratic “technostructure” that exercised a powerful influence over the economy. In Economics and the Public Purpose (1973) he discussed a bureaucratic reciprocity between big government and big business that often worked against the public interest.

“The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night in a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings.”

On trickle-down economics:
“If you feed the horse enough oats, the sparrow will survive on the highway.”

On conservatives:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

On leadership:
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

Capitalism vs Communism:
“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.”

A few years ago, I saw an interview with him in which he was asked what was different about the Bush administration. He said something to the effect that for the first time, corporations are running our government directly.

(If anyone can find that quotation or a reference, please comment – I’d appreciate it.)

Reality will not be overthrown

Reality will not be overthrown

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The United States has, until now, been a (if not "the") world leader in scientific research and the development of technologies. This has been the backbone of public policies that navigate reality, and it has brought us our highish standard of living and our economy of relative priviledge. But I think we’re on the way out of that role. When ideologies replace knowledge, it is always the people who pay.

Certain fundamentalist groups, suspicious of all intellectuals, "eggheads," and independent thought, have moved us even further into a state of socio-pathology. Their effects on public policy, public higher education, biomedical research, family planning and sex education, environmental issues, the arts and humanities, freedom of inquiry, and even research funding for the common good are monumental, and I suspect that these effects will continue to feed into the sucking vortex of disaster created the skewed priorities of the neocons and crony corporatists.

This administration puts political interests above our well-being as a people. Knowledge and expertise has been pushed aside in favor of unqualified appointments (or those with clear conflicts of interest), the dissolution of advisory committees, and even censorship and suppression of reports from the government’s own scientists.

Across the board, "intelligence" (I use the term in its double meaning) is disregarded unless it supports a conclusion desired by power. There is nothing more deadly to truth than this. I believe such disregard is a substantial security risk that presents a clear and present danger to the American people. We are becoming a danger to ourselves as well as to others. There is still room in our current system for things to change. I hope that the momentum for such change is growing, and I hope that real leaders will emerge – soonest – in this nation’s time of need.

75 Reasons to Reexamine George W

75 Reasons to Reexamine George W

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This was originally titled 75 reasons not to hire Georgie, but I think it’s a little late for that now. I’m sure this has been circulating around for a bit, but it was still interesting. Here’s some of what we know, what is out in plain sight. Assess this resume again.

Past work experience:

1) Ran for congress and lost.
2) Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.
3) Bought an oil company, but couldn’t find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after he sold all his stock.
4) Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money.
5) With fathers help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.

Accomplishments:

6) Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America.
7) Cut taxes, and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
8) Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history.
9) Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of his daddy’s appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:

10) Attacked and took over two small, helpless countries. Slaughtered over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children.
11) Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
12) Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
13) Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any twelve-month period.
14) Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
15) First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
16) First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
17) First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
18) After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history (911).
19) Set the record for more campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
20) In his first two years in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
21) Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any other president in US history.
22) Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a twelve-month period.
23) Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any other president in US history.
24) Set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president since the advent of television.
25) Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other president in US history.
26) Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history, and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
27) Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history, and refused to use the national reserves, as past presidents have.
28) Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
29) Set the all-time record for most people worldwide simultaneously to take to the streets to protest against him (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any one person in the history of humankind.
30) Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
31) His presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.
32) Members of his cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The ‘poorest’ multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has an Exxon oil tanker named after her).
33) First president in US history to have all 50 states simultaneously go bankrupt.
34) Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.
35) First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation. Many American boys and girls were lost to his greed, and countless civilians.
36) Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States. How can he make government even bigger? Perhaps by establishing a Bureau for Acceptable Sexual Practices!
37) Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending-increases – more than any president in US history. His tax-giveaways to the very rich alone might require three million million dollars!
38) First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
39) First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.
40) He removed more checks and balances, creating less Congressional oversight, than known by any presidential administration in US history. Now, no one knows his plans until they are already accomplished!
41) He took from sound programs that helped people, and gave the money to the richest people in the world.
42) Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
43) Withdrew from the World Court of Law.
44) Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war.
45) So, by default, he no longer abides by the Geneva Conventions. These have been mocked by his appointed puppet, Alberto Gonzales.
46) First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the twenty-oh-two US elections).
47) All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
48) His biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
49) Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
50) First president in US history unilaterally to attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
51) First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied, saying that the enemy had the code to Air Force One).
52) First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
53) Took the enormous, overflowing sympathy of the whole world for the US after 911, and in less than a year, made the US the most resented and despised country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
54) With a policy of “disengagement,” created the most hostile Israeli-Palestinian relations in at least 30 years.
55) First US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
56) First US president in history to have the people of South Korea feel more threatened by the US than by their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
57) Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
58) Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
59) Failed to fulfill his pledge to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.”
60) Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capital building. After 18 months he had no leads and zero suspects.
61) In the 18 months following the 911 attacks, he prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
62) Removed more freedoms and civil liberties from Americans than any other president in US history.
63) In a little over two years, he has created the most severely divided country, where people used to stand in unity. This is possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the Civil War.
64) He entered office with the strongest economy in US history; and, within less than two years turned every single economic indicator south.

Records and References:

65) At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available for public inspection).
66) AWOL from National Guard.
67) Deserted the military during a time of war.
68) Refused to take drug test.
69) Refused to answer any questions about drug-use.
70) All records of his tenure as governor of Texas have been mysteriously spirited away to his daddy’s library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
71) All records of any SEC investigations into his insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
72) All minutes of meetings for any public corporation in which he served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
73) Any records or minutes from meetings he (or his VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
74) For personal references please speak to his daddy or uncle James Baker (They can both be reached at their offices at the Carlyle Group for War-profiteering.
75. Last but not least, he has taken very important and significant steps to transform the United States into a truly fascist country.
(“Fascism” is sharing governmental power with corporations.)

Thanks Richard as always!