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SUNDAY 10.24.04 / 8:09 PM / LINK / COMMENT

What was God saying then about empire?

While George Bush has had stupendous catastrophic success selling his myopic, militaristic brand of security to 50% of the nation, he's undermining our security by the minute, prayer by prayer. As powerful as we are we cannot survive isolation from the rest of the world and the absence of a concerted global coalition to head us back toward enlightened civilization. Not while we're blowing things up in a haze of faith. After it morphed from a Republic to a faith-based empire ruled by a "god", reality took down mighty Rome. What was God saying then about empire?

Ron Suskind in his article, Without a Doubt, tells of a meeting with a senior Bush advisor that featured this exchange:

"In ...2002... I wrote an article... the White House didn't like (and) I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush ... he told me something ... which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

This is remarkable. But what's remarkable is not just what was said, but that it disappeared into a cloud of faith-based fog, and never met with shred of reality-based outrage. It languishes still behind Bush protectors like smug Brit Hume and odious Hollerin' Hannity --which you'd expect from Fox-- but where's the rest of the media?

George Bush's premise is that unreflective backbone and bombs will make us safe. And he's not into debating it. Meanwhile, according to middle-east whiz, Thomas Friedman, due to our president's unwavering missionary faith and his obsession with Saddam Hussein, we have a new name on the streets of Islam. We're all lumped together under the term JIA (Jews, Israel, America). This is our Islamic identity where it really counts for our security --among the people. Walking the avenues of any other nation, especially disaffected ones, we're not Americans anymore, we're JIAs.

P.S. For all of you not in the reality-based community, J-I-A is alternately spelled t-a-r-g-e-t...

Read the Thomas Friedman article here, or the one by Ron Suskind here.


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SATURDAY 10.23.04 / 8:09 PM / LINK / COMMENT

Ersatz Christianity

Laura Rozen talks ersatz Christianity at Tom Paine.com. You know, the kind Republicans who hang around the Whited Sepulcher practice.

Check out the president's political advisor sending sacred messages into a phone. He's talking about a political operative he was not happy with:

"We will f*** him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f***** him," said Rove. As James Wolcott reminds us, "He wasn't talking about Saddam Hussein either. Some Christian, huh?" Sounds like Dick Cheney.

I wonder what all those faith-based, family-value middle-American church-goers think of that kind of Christian message?

"No problem, as long as it keeps me safe and it's faith-based."


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10.23.04 /3:11 PM / LINK / COMMENT

Something around here does smell like garbage

Here's a little more on Cheney's "garbage" quote (PREVIOUS POST) from TPM.

"Look at the lede of this Washington Post article from April 17, 2002 ...

'The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.' "

Yes, Mr. VP, something around here does smell like gabage...


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10.23.04 /11:30 AM / LINK / COMMENT

I hope Little Brother will be watching Big Brother big time

I hope the Democrats will be right on the tail of the Republican "poll watchers", watching them as they try to shoo potential Democrat voters from the polls on Nov. 2nd. I hope Little Brother will be watching Big Brother big time.

Read the story here.

It's gonna be ugly folks.


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10.23.04 /9:39 AM / LINK / COMMENT

It's Garbage

Josh Marshall has a post addressing the now-circulating administration rebuttal to John Kerry's claim the administration blew the opportunity to catch Osama at Tora Bora. Dick Cheney called it "garbage". But given his moral compass Dick Cheney is not a credible source for info about these things (even Cheney's wife, Lynn, suggested obliquely that her husband was "not a good man").

Marshall says, "Now al Qaida expert Peter Bergen has a new piece up on his site which makes it pretty clear that this new claim is about as factual as most things the Vice President says."

Ah, the halls of the Whited Sepulcher, wherein fountains of mendacity flow into pools of double-talk from which rank hypocrites sip.


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10.23.04 /9:39 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Ok, I'd like you to use your imagination

If some left-leaning talking-head had just been outed as a "dirty-talking", phone-sex obsessed, sexual harrassing, slimeball would Fox news be all over the story or what? I can see Sean Hannity right now spewing venom and spittle at the camera lens, bullying and talking over the hapless sucker's defense in one of his "interviews".

You don't hear much about this on Fox. Why not? Could it be that the slimeball in question is one of Fox's prime moralistic cash cows?

Bill (Shut Up!) O'Rielly to be exact. Hmmmm?

This ought to tell you something about the value of the "news" concocted by Rupert Murdoch's video rag.

Frank Rich talks about it here.


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10.23.04 / 8:06 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Oh yeah, I forgot, because they're hypocrites

Look at this picture closely. Does this person look corrupt? Does she have horns? Does it look like she engages in "unnatural sex? Well, according to fundamental right-wing Republicans (if they were to be consistent), "Yes" is the answer to all three questions.

This is Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's unapologetic, self-outed and proud lesbian daughter. The one John Kerry has been excoriated about since the last debate when he commented on Ms. Cheney's lesbianism.

For calling Mary a lesbian, Mary's mother said, "(Kerry) is not a good man." But since Dick himself did the same thing in a televised "town hall" meeting with supporters (there will never be a non-supporter at a Bush gathering as long as Karl Rove has goons), he must also not be a "good man".

But why would calling someone a lesbian in public make someone "not good"? It must be because calling someone a lesbian at all is "not good". And that could only be because being a lesbian is "not good". For the hard-of-thinking you've got to ask, if Kerry called Cheney's daughter a "saint" (or maybe a faith-based lesbian) would this have upset the Cheneys so? Probably not.

So, to follow the logic (as if this was desireable in the Bush cult) Kerry is "not good" because he mentioned that Mary Cheney is a lesbian and being a lesbian is "not good". Therefore in saying what he said he exposed Mary Cheney's corrupt behavior and life style to the electorate. Why else would they make such a fuss about Kerry uttering the "L" word in connection with their daughter?

Oh yeah, I forgot, because their hypocrites.


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10.23.04 / 8:06 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Soul or judgement? You be the judge

David Brooks, who'll gloss over George Bush's ineptitudes until hell freezes over (or until Bush admits a mistake) says America remains divided right down the middle over "...what sort of leader we need: the Republican who leads with his soul or the Democrat who leads with his judgment."

Brooks may be right, but here's what I think about leaders who lead with their souls (keep in mind the idea of corrupted souls): Ghengis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Jim Jones, John Gotti --all operated first on the dictates of their inner life --their private obsessions and visions. All ignored certain truths and rejected judgements of exterior concerns. All were set in their ways. All were determined to stay the course. All were best suited to run dictatorships. And none were sympatico with the idea of democracy and the free interchange of ideas.

Leaders with judgement, on the other hand, are well suited to oversee democracies. Judgement goes a long way to finding our way through the chaos that is the world. Judgement is the character trait that keeps us out of hell, as doubt is the attitude that keeps us free.

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10.23.04 / 8:01 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Safe at all costs

Good article by Nicholas Kristoff in today's NY Times. He argues against cherry-picking biblical phrases to suit your politics and offers some good examples as to why not. But his arguments rely on intellectual honesty and openess to debate and you won't find much of this among fundamentalists, Christian or Islamic.

You won't find it among the make-me-safe-at-all-costs Bush cult either.

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THURSDAY 10.21.04 / 7:02 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Oh, there'll be no casualties...

Pat Robertson is not the most credible person in the world, but according to him (oddly enough), when he told Bush he'd better prepare Americans for casualties in the war, Bush told him not to worry, there'll be no casualties.

Why would pro-bush Robertson say that?

Josh Marshall discusses it here.


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10.21.04 / 6:17 AM / LINK / COMMENT

Who would you take on a tiger hunt?

This is the question Americans must answer going into the election.

The two things American heads are tangled up in while irrelevant campaign ads roll are, according to columnist Thomas Friedman: We really do have enemies out there, and, we're really on the wrong track.

Friedman says Kerry has had to answer the question of whether he understands the first. George Bush has to answer the question of whether he understand the second.

Have either answered their question?

Unless you think Kerry is completely stupid, which I think there's ample evidence against, you have to know that he understands the nature of the enemy.

George Bush, on the other hand has clearly demonstated he will take us to hell in an un-up-armored Humvee to prove he's not wrong about where we're going.

That's the end of that argument for me.


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TUESDAY 10.19.04 / 7:12 AM / LINK / COMMENT

We'll be in and out of Iraq, lickity split.
Oh yeah, and there'll be no draft too.

If George Bush continues his militaristic policies into a second term --and, directed by God to do so, could he refuse?-- there will be a draft.

As Paul Krugman says here, it's just another example of Bush bait and switch. More doubletalk, More BS. Saying there'll be no draft is like saying that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk (the first part at least) --they're still debugging part two.

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What we're up against:





10.17.04 / 4:34 PM / LINK / COMMENT

More on the Suskind piece from the NY Times magazine article (here's my first post on this)

I'm just going to throw out some short takes from Suskind's article, Without a Doubt, in today's NY Times.

''...if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' "...a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. " "...this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' "...they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them." ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.''

There's way more here.


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10.17.04 / 4:34 PM / LINK / COMMENT

Bushism in a nutshell: bringing the house down --

Just ran across this at Talking Points Memo.

These are remarks from Esquire's Ron Suskind from an article that appeared in last Sunday's NY Times magazine section. Suskind also wrote The Price of Loyalty, telling tales of Paul O'Niell, Bush's first Treasury Secretary.

In this case he's not talking about the light that went off in O'Niell's head regarding the strange obtuse zeal of George Bush. Suskind is talking here more specifically about the missionary intent of our president.

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

These guy's cups runneth over with themselves, breaking levees around the world, creating new "undiscernable realities" (like why God cursed us with Bush). Meanwhile all peons --all of us-- are forver bogged down in discernable ones, watchin' the road, studyin' the dust, keeping to our place so to speak; studying the majestic undiscernable realities of histories actors. What a load of crap.

There's nothing undiscernable about this kind of thinking. It's as old as the hills. These people believe they're really special. Forget about God. This is their faith. These people are megalomaniacs.

History's actors, bullshit. We're all history's actors you idiots. But you, as with all of history's typical treacherous over-actors, get a rush bringing the house down --around our ears.



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10.17.04 / 9:38 AM / LINK / COMMENT

When everyday's called Ivan

Paraphrasing Dylan:

Throw your TV out the window. Throw your Sega out there too. Throw Atari out the door. You won't need it anymore. For soon the baby booms come due. Is it really any wonder The world that our children will receive? We spewed our spell now they'll go under. Yet we still populate and bree--eee--eee-eeed. I can hear that awful whistle blowin', I smell a great disaster too. A million poor kids on the street Will soon take our seats For very soon the baby booms come true.

I was inspired by today's Thomas Friedman commentary to rewrite that upbeat song in a very downbeat way.

Friedman says there's a perfect storm brewing comprised of three smaller, but very impressive ones all heading straight at us. And Florida won't be the only state affected this time. Friedman predicts this perfect storm will hit within the next two presidential terms.

Storm #1 according to Friedman, is when Social Security meets the high pressure front of rising numbers of retirees.

Our very concerned weatherman, Thomas, says, "The leading edge of the American baby boom generation is now just two presidential terms away from claiming its Social Security and Medicare benefits. 'With unfunded entitlement liabilities at $74 trillion in today's dollars - an amount far exceeding the net worth of our entire national economy - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare...(blah, blah blah) -my emphasis.". But you understand the forecast.

Storm #2 is a buildup of high pressure conditions in what we call "outlying regions", namely India, China and Eastern Europe. Specifically the huge number of young people of those areas. Who, Friedman tells us, "...will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs." And he goes on, "The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top... They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work."

"When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer," Friedman asks? "When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid's idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way."

Storm #3 consists of gale force winds blowing from Arab regions. There says Friedman, "...the highest rate of population growth in the world in the last half century... (and) the highest unemployment rates in the world today ... (and the fact that) one-third of the Arab population is under the age of 15 and will soon be entering both a barren job market and its child-bearing years ... (will lead to) a prescription for humiliation and suicide terrorism."

To make matters worse our columnist says our politicians won't speak the truth about these things because of the way we do politics in the U.S. of A. But he says somebody better get some brass balls real soon or our kids will be rudely blown out of their cozy fantasy worlds. Then every state will be the Sunshine State in hurricane season. And everyday will be called Ivan.

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