The Meat of the Matter

2006-10-12T07:33:00.000-07:00

Surprise!

The Meat of the Matter is moving over to Wordpress. Blogger has served me well for these past years, but I'm tired of needing three services to manage one blog (Blogger, HaloScan, Blogroller). Plus, the old blog was starting to look tired, and my template was so heavily modified that one change could mess it all up. Please re-point your browsers to http://meatofthematter.wordpress.com See ya there!

2006-10-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Calling For Reinforcements

My Blog needs a shot in the arm. We seem to be arguing with only one person, so I am going to reach out and try to find some really big Conservative guns to come in here and help Todd out. Otherwise, we just end up slinging poo at each other, and that is frankly a waste of my time. I want us to get some serious debate going with people who have the time and inclination to do research, and back up the Conservative stance with some meat. Stay tuned for some major renovations.

2006-10-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Gas Prices and Elections

Two primary forces drive the price of anything: supply and demand. Demand for gasoline has been rising exponentially--not merely due to the popularity of SUVs in North America, but mostly by the emergence of India and China on the world stage and their subsequent need for petroleum products. Reflexively, the supply is decreasing and fixed. No economist in his right mind can tell you that the price of oil will go anywhere but up. This is not the President's fault, although temporary issues in the Middle East certainly don't help. Furthermore, the recent decrease in the price of oil can also not be credited to the President. Or can it? The price of gas fluctuates largely based on reserves. The amount of oil in reserve is based on reports from major suppliers--Saudi Arabia being the largest. These reports are easily manipulated, and frankly, Saudi Arabia holds the keys to the kingdom when it comes to temporary fluctuations in the price of a barrel of crude. It just so happens that the Bush family is extremely good friends with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. In fact, there is historical precedent to assume that today's gas prices are the result of manipulations intended to influence the upcoming election. I don't have to go very far back to show the history here. I only have to go back to the last election in 2004. CNN reported, based on a Bob Woodward finding, that Prince Bandar agreed to temporarily increase production, which would increase the reserve and thus lower the price of oil--all for the purpose of getting President Bush re-elected. If you look at the chart, you'll see a fairly sharp dip in November of 2004. How fortuitous for the Republicans! Also, how fortuitous for the gas companies, since Republican policies allowed them to make record profits in January of 2005. After the 2004 election, the price jumped right back up and continued skyrocketing We see a similiar trend now. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what is going on.

2006-10-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

Progressive Plans on Iraq

We DO need a plan to get out of Iraq. The majority of American people want us out of Iraq. The majority of Iraqi people want us out of Iraq. Yet, neither of our "representative" governments are in favor of getting us out of Iraq any time soon. Why is that? Because our current adminstration doesn't have a plan. Reflexively, I've oft heard it said that "the left has no plan" regarding how to handle the situation in Iraq. News soundbytes and bloggers who purport themselves to be in the know have parrotted the Right-Wing theory that The Left just wants to "cut and run". But how intelligent is this argument? It assumes that the Democrats have no exit plan, and that President Bush does. In fact, President Bush hasn't made it all that clear of what our objectives are. All I've heard is "When Iraq Stands up, We'll Stand Down." Well that's nifty, but what does it mean? What is the timetable? What are the steps we are taking to get them to stand up? What are the incentives? Answer: "They don't know." And the coup de grace: the Left has offered several plans. Earlier this year, one of them got a fairly united backing from the Democratic party. News of this can be found here and it is called "Strategic Redeployment" and seems to be a well-reasoned plan that takes many factors into consideration. Another--possibly even better--idea is to divide Iraq into three regions that would more accurately reflect the three distinct national cultures that Iraq has. Give each region the ability to govern itself according to its culture, and give the central government the reigns on the few areas of common interest. This plan makes a whole hell of a lot of sense. And it comes to us from Joe Biden ... a Democrat. The news media and the Bush-Koolaid-Drinkers have puppeted out the "cut and run" term so many times, that it has led many gullible Americans to believe that the Left has no plan. The fact is, we do. Bush is the one who has no plan. So when it comes to the word "plan" I can come to only one conclusion Inigo Montoya did: "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

2006-10-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

R ... The New Scarlet Letter

Would you trust your child with this man? In the dark of night, you turn your kitchen light on, and you see dozens of slimy little creatures run for the safety of darkness. Those aren't Cockroaches, they're Republicans! Senator Hastert, who winkingly approved of Sen. Foley's pedophilia, is finding people "accidentally" cancelling fundraisers for him. Some politcal ads for Republican Senators and Representatives are "accidentally" leaving out which party they are in. The party whose election slogan in 2000 was ... what was it? Compassion and decency? No, wait ... Morals and decency? Aw shucks, I've forgotten what their slogan was now. But these days Republicans were wishing it were something that held them to a slightly lower standard. Meanwhile, Bob Woodward has written a book that says that things in Iraq are much worse than the Bush Administration has been letting on. It's already in its 3rd printing and selling like hotcakes. And lastly, our President has slashed away at another American value called Habeas Corpus. Apparently, the situation in the world is so bad that people whom the President suspects are guilty, no longer have to be proven guilty. Oh wait ... it's been that way ever since he suspected Saddam was an Al Qaida kingpin with his finger poised over a button to launch WMDs against us. Well, those American values are out-of-date anyway. They were thought up in the 1700s and we live in a different time! 9/11! 9/11! Godspeed a Progressive majority.

2006-09-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

Did Saddam Hussein Train Terrorists?

This topic keeps coming up. There are those who still believe that he did. Indeed, the "status quo" at one time was that this was true, and it helped justify the invasion of Iraq. I've since heard a number of times that these allegations were proven false, but didn't really do any research to dig up news articles. Even though the burden of proof lies with the people who claim that Hussein trained terrorists, I will help show the truth. We are, after all, the Meat of the Madness. First, a very compelling story came out from a defected army officer of Hussein's army that Saddam had worked with Al Qaida operatives, that they had a fuselage of a jetliner and were running training missions. This story was filled with details that just made it sound true, and was key in establishing a link between Hussein and Al Qaida, and helped garner anti-Saddam sentiment among American citizens that would pressure Congress into approving the war. If only it had been true. Later, as shown in an article printed in Knight-Ridder in March, 2004. "... many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department. "Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability." Knight-Ridder offers a mea cupla, admitting that they themselves ran some of the false news items as they were fed to them through governmental channels. "The articles made numerous assertions that so far haven't been substantiated 11 months after Baghdad fell [emphasis mine], including charges that ... Iraq trained Islamic extremists in the same hijacking techniques used in the Sept. 11 strikes and prepared them for operations against Iraq's neighbors and possibly the United States. Two senior U.S. officials said that so far no evidence has been found to substantiate the charge." The initial descriptions explicitly stated that biological weapons were found in fake water wells around Baghdad. No fake water wells have been found. There was an explicit detail that there was a laboratory under a Hospital. This was not found either. Judith Miller, who was the journalist who printed the testimony from the defector, had not replied to inquiries made by Knight-Ridder at the time this article was written. The testimony came to us via Ahmad Chalabi, a man with a long history of telling grand lies to governments, and whose organization (the INC) the CIA and State Department have long viewed as unreliable. As stated by Knight-Ridder, "U.S. intelligence officials have determined that virtually all of the defectors' information was marginal or useless, and that some of the defectors were fabricators or embellished the threat from Saddam." Ah but the lies had already achieved their goal. We were already occupying Iraq by the time they were uncovered, and the news cycles spent on the lies dwarfed the news cycles spent on uncovering the lies. So many Americans still believe the lies. There were other stories as well that implicated that Iraq trained terrorists. They were all (conveniently) completely unsubstantiated, like a hand-written note showing that Mohammad Atta was at the head of his class in terrorism training. The author and origin of the note, of course, are not verifiable. To wit, I once got an e-mail from the President of the United States. It turned out to be just my friend goofing around spoofing an e-mail address. Is it hard to believe that there were forces at work who wanted the US to invade Iraq? Was it hard for them to know that all they needed to do was concoct evidence that tied Iraq to 9/11? No, it wasn't hard, because the Cheney/Rumsfeld team were telescoping their intense search to find intelligence leading to this conclusion. It also made them susceptible to hoaxes. It also made it extremely easy for people with supportive evidence (even though it was unsubstantiated) to be ushered to the nearest news outlet at the beck and call of the Bush regime. Do I think Saddam was a good guy? Absolutely not. I think he was guilty of a host of crimes--however, harboring or training terrorists was not one of them. So, Saddam did not train terrorists. Anyone saying as much on this blog will be grilled to prove it.

2006-09-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah!

Jesus' image found in a dog's butt. Pardon me while I go repent.

2006-09-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Oh, Muslim ... nevermind

Even Emily Latella of Saturday Night Live could not have made this one up. They might correct it soon, but the headline reads "Berlin Opera Canceled Because Of Offensive Muslin Content." Uhh ... that should read "Muslim" folks. Muslin is a nice type of cotton fabric.

2006-09-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

A Lesson From The Dude

In puzzling over our situation in Iraq, I was reminded of a lesson from the greatest-of-all-movies, "The Big Lebowski." It was one of those moment where you smack your forehead and say "doh!" because the metaphor between our world situation is already clearly explained and solved in the prescient movie. It's been there all along, the message secretly hidden in a hilarious scene. In the movie, The Dude (Jeffery Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges), and his best friend Walter, (played by John Goodman) represent George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In a key scene in the movie, the Dude and Walter are trying to recover some stolen money. The Dude and Walter had done some pretty good police work, and determined that the car had been stolen by a juvenile delinquent named Larry Sellers. Larry Sellers represents Osama Bin Laden. The Dude and Walter go to Larry's house, and question him about his homework they found in the car, but Larry won't give up any information. So, in an effort to solve their problem, Walter makes another rash, albeit circumstantially very logical deduction. There is a shiny new corvette with the sticker still on it, out in the street in front of Larry's house. Walter assumes that Larry took their money and bought it. The car represents Iraq. Walter takes a baseball bat, and repeats the words "This is what happens when you fuck a man in the ass!" and beats the shit out of the corvette. This represents our attack and occupation of Iraq. Then, from a nearby house, comes the actual owner of the corvette. He is dark-skinned, foreign, and very very angry. He represents the rest of the world. He had not been angry before, but he is now, because we beat the shit out of the corvette (Iraq). So ... imagine you are Walter. You've just found out that you've beaten the shit out of the wrong car. And now you have a formidable enemy who is extremely angry. Do you, A) Attack the man, B) Keep beating up the Corvette because no one else has offered up any other plan, C) Calm down, get some In-&-Out burgers, and drive home.

2006-09-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Thus Ends the Argument …

Today’s news should do it. A consensus view of all 16 U.S. Intelligence Agencies indicates what I have always suspected, but never had the expertise or ability to prove: the US occupation of Iraq is making Terrorism worse, not better. We attacked and occupied Iraq based on the assumption that they had WMDs and that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al’ Qaida. After both of these assumptions were proven false, the remaining argument for most war supporters was that we were waging War with Terrorism, and that our presence in Iraq was somehow aiding that effort. At that point, the argument became one of conjecture and assumption, and nobody could ever win. Well, now the case is closed. Our presence in Iraq has clearly been shown to be assisting terrorism. Their numbers are increasing; they are in more places, with newer, better and more destructive ideas—by using the chaotic Iraq as their training ground. It would seem to me that people who have clung to belief and supported Bush’s war should, at this point, concede that perhaps it turned out to be a bad idea after all. Bush claimed last week that the world is a safer place because we removed Saddam from power. That, it turns out, is incorrect. Our reasons for going in were wrong, and our reasons for staying were misguided. It’s almost October. Surprise.

2006-09-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Generalissimo Bush

You can see the quote here. Bush said last November "We do not torture." You can even watch the video of him saying these words. He was lying. Sen. McCain tried to introduce an anti-torture bill. Dick Cheney, a member of the Executive Branch that said "We do not torture" urged Republican Senators to vote down McCain's bill. Why? Because we do torture. Rumsfeld has been a major proponent of torture because he believes it works. Bush said he would veto McCain's bill. Then Bush realized he was be politically isolated if he stood against this. So Bush, the man who repeatedly claimed he did not make decisions based on other people's opinion, changed his mind and signed the bill. When doing so, he acted as if it were his idea all along by saying "This legislation will now 'make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad." But here's the rub. Torture has been illegal since we agreed to the UN Bill against it in 1988. Whatever. Can we please get this dirty man out of our nice clean White House? "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

2006-09-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

The Happiest Sweatshop on Earth

I used to work for Disney. I learned a lot about Walt Disney when I worked there, and he was a truly great man. However, I believe his organization has lost some of its lustre since Walt's passing. When I worked there, it felt more corporate than all the corporate jobs I've had since. There was constantly a feeling of "write or die" among us writers, and we all knew the axe above our necks could fall any moment. Eventually it did. But Disney's dedication to profits has been proven. Their lack of corporate responsibility is equally shown in light of a few recent news events. First, they've been accused of labor abuses in China. When being audited by concern groups, they offer to pay workers to help them cover up the truth. According to the group's latest findings, workers at the three factories are underpaid and receive an hourly wage of 2.19 yuan to 3.41 yuan, instead of the legal wage requirement of 4.02 yuan to 4.12 yuan per hour. "Some of the workers are forced to work up to 14 hours every day and 30 days a month, and all of them are denied overtime pay," Yau said. Second, ABC, which is owned by Disney, recently aired a "documentary" about alleged events that occured during the Clinton Administration, that accused that President of failing to capture Osama Bin Laden for political reasons. The accuracy of this docudrama has been assailed by Clinton himself, as well as many of the shows historical consultants, and even several members of the 9/11 Commission. The airing of this docudrama was interrupted by President Bush, who wished to address the nation and by re-submitting his tired statements about our war against terrorism. Coincidence? I think not. I'm not making a big deal of it (like I did with Yahoo!), but Disney won't be getting my business anymore. They abuse their employees, and lie to the nation, and make cute little cartoons that influence our children. Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it's off to Dreamworks I go.

2006-09-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Bye Bye, Neighborhood Blogs

Awhile ago I linked to a very cool idea: Neighblogs. It allowed me to see who the bloggers were in my neighborhood. Yeah! Then I moved, and when trying to update my locations, found that Neighblogs had changed. Now I needed to find out my latitude and longitude. OK, how? It points me to instructions here. This is not an instruction page, but some technophiles loving tribute to the history of geo-tagging. After searching for too long for instructions, I decided Neighblogs wasn't worth it. Neighblogs screwed up their really cool idea by forgetting about people. Feh.

2006-09-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Religious Left

A church right here in Pasadena is now being investigated by the IRS because someone there delivered an anti-war sermon. It's an interesting case. The sermon was delivered prior to the 2004 election, and could have truly been guilty of electioneering. What I find interesting, however, is that it was one of the rare anti-war churches that is being made an example of. If I were to garner taped sermons from scores of Red States, I bet I could find 20 Pro-Bush sermons delivered in 2004 for every single anti-Bush sermon. As usual, however, these blokes are not thinking two moves ahead. Despots make lousy chess players.

2006-09-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

Islam Reacts

The Pope has implied that Islam spreads its faith through violence, and has urged a reasonable discussion between the two worlds, because "God is reasonable." Islam did not like this comment, said it is absolutely wrong, and the reaction may lead to violence. And here's a quote from CSN News: "Among those condemning the pope's words about violence and Islam were the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization based in numerous Arab countries which gave birth to the Hamas terrorist group in the Palestinian territories. The pope also was criticized by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born scholar based in Qatar and regarded as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi has come under fire for praising Palestinian suicide bombers and for calling on Muslims to fight against U.S. forces in Iraq." In a way, I think it wasn't too bright for the Pope to say this. On the other hand, it just might have been brilliant, as the Muslim world will be forced to examine the way they react to this. It would seem that those who are reacting most are those who are most guilty. We certainly do live in interesting times.

2006-09-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

No Explanation Required ...

CNN Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs POSTED: 7:56 p.m. EDT, September 12, 2006 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press." The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved. Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.

2006-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Five Years On ....

It was five years ago today that evil forces tried to rip our country apart. It is believed that these forces were motivated by hatred of our freedoms, hatred our way of life, disdain for our morals, and ... just maybe ... jealousy of our sense of national unity and our success as a nation. Five years later, we are seeing our freedoms deteriorate, our way of life encumbered, our morals being enforced by pandering polititians, and our unity in tatters. In response to the attacks, we have irrationally shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a completely random nation, fueled the hatred of scores of disenfranchised and damaged peoples, and squandered the good will of united globe who stood with us on 9/11/2001. And our future success as a nation is now jeopardized by an overwhelming war debt. But I also believe that the goodness of the American people is being put to the test, and I believe we can regain our footing as a nation, and set aright the wrongs that have been done. I'm reminded of a line in the movie "Control Room," in which Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese journalist with Al Jazeera, says that he has "absolute confidence in the United States Constitution and absolute confidence in the American people to stop this." That came from an Al Jazeera reporter. Our capabilities for doing the right thing as a nation are clear--even to those who our own administration has reviled. Well it's clear to me too. I believe the United States is the greatest of all nations, and I believe our success and wealth are evidence of a system that may not be perfect, but is undeniably better than all the other systems one could offer. And our success has blossomed from one central tenet of our culture: faith in ourselves. Our government was devised with the belief that the people can rule themselves. While the current administration has been using fear and control to tactically chip away at that faith, it lacks the strategy to eradicate that faith from our culture. America has, and will always have, freedom in our hearts. Attempts at taking it away will fail. The question is ... when? And in these next few months, Americans will have one of the most important elections of our lifetime. In this election we have the chance to start rebuilding what has been systematically dismantled over the past five years. We have the chance to establish a new mandate (an actual mandate) that will send a clear signal to the current administration, and more importantly, to the rest of the world. I would like to prove Mr. Ibrahim right. I'm not a strong believer in either political party in this country. But I am a strong believer that it is only through opposition that we maintain the proper balance of powers that will keep our country strong. For that reason I'm hoping that a democratic majority in the House of Representatives in November will make its first order of business to Impeach President Bush AND Vice President Cheney.

2006-09-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Iraq Was Not Helping Al-Qaida Before The War

This news just in. Contrary to recent evidence, and consistent messages from the White House to the contrary, there is still no link between Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. This ties in nicely with my last post. Credible sources can plant an idea, and that idea becomes a fact that remains, even though the truth of the issue is later found to be much different. Leading up to the war, Colin Powell stated that they had evidence that Iraq was training terrorists. That turned out to be untrue, and was obtained from a confession during torture. The idea, however, remains.

2006-09-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

ABC Wants Republicans to Win In the Mid-Term Elections

That's what this is about. ABC is airing a controversial "documentary" that is not about 9/11, but about earlier attempts to capture Osama bin Laden. ABC is owned by Disney, which is a corporate conglomerate that has been suckling at the ample teet of the NeoCons. And since they have amazing power over the populace via their network, they have produced--and intend to air--a "documentary" that many claim is revisionist history. People will assume this documentary to be fact. Clearly, it is biased. The show will air over two nights. One of those is 9/11. It is placing the blame for the events of 9/11/2001 squarely on the shoulders of -- I bet you thought I was going to say George Bush, right? Wrong! They are blaming Bill Clinton. One of the officials, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, said in her letter to the Disney executive, Robert A. Iger, that although she had requested a copy of the film, ABC had not given her one. But, Ms. Albright said, she has been told by people who have seen it that it "depicts scenes that never happened, events that never took place, decisions that were never made and conversations that never occurred." I have no idea if the events depicted in this documentary are true or not. I do know that there will probably be a lot of hooplah over this story in the next few days. All of it will serve ABC well, as it simply means that more people will watch it. If the documentary turns out to be misleading, ABC will be included with FOX in the media conglomerates who do the White House's bidding. But by the time everyone gets the facts straight, and the dust has settled, only the images in the fictitious docudrama will have been converted to facts in the minds of the gullible populace. It’s a pretty good system for the people who control the media. I wonder why the only strategic defense the Republicans can make for their miserable failings is to continue to attack the man who was president six years ago? But ... that's another post entirely. Daily Kos posted a survey: "What is the greater threat to Democracy? Corporate media consolidation or terrorists? Find out the results here.

2006-08-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

Rumsfeld Makes a Point

I just watched this: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/30/rumsfeld-war-critics-2/ I actually went to this news article, knowing what was there. I expected to react one way, but surprised myself by partially agreeing with what Rumsfeld is saying. At first I thought, "Feh! He's comparing war critics to those who mollified the Nazi regime! Feh!" And yeah ... feh ... that's bullshit on one level. I will get to that. But on another level, what he is actually warning against is something that many of us Liberals should probably listen to. The destructive capacity and intent of Militant Islamic regimes should not be underestimated. They hate us, they hate our way of life, and their own leaders are instructing their sheep to destroy us. Given the chance, they will. This calls for drastic measures, to be sure. And this warning should be heeded, and Liberals should make sure we have a plan on what to do. However ... the approach that Rumsfeld has taken was to attack a nation that was NOT part of this problem. His argument is rendered totally sterile because it assumes that the current course of action has been taken to address the problem he is describing. Earth to Rumsfeld: Occupying Iraq is not addressing the problem with terrorism.

2006-08-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

More from the Prophet

Here is another quote from "Al Ahkenseh" Oh yea, Oh yea, and in the last days, men will not speak as men. Instead, each man will speak into a tube, and yea, on the other end of the tube shall be an automaton with the voice of a woman. The woman can speak, but the men can only push buttons. And yea, the woman will offer the men particular options for topics that the men can speak about, like payment amounts and account information, but these options will never represent what the man *really* wants to speak about. Oh yea, and the man will push random buttons hoping to speak to a real person, but she shall not flinch. She will say, "You have pressed an incorrect option." And yea, the man will shout obscenities at the woman, and she shall say, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that." Eventually the men will hang up, dejected and afraid.

2006-08-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

Techo-Tyranny

Reporters Without Borders has learned that a British company, Silver Bullet, and a US company, Verint Systems (a subsidiary of Comverse Technology), sold equipment for intercepting mobile phone calls to the Vietnamese intelligence services. RWB: "... telecommunications companies must be forced to respect certain rules of ethical conduct. In particular, they should be banned from selling surveillance equipment to repressive governments." There was a day when America set an example of liberty for the world. But alas, we are no longer in a position (as a country) to condemn such behavior. We can only condemn those companies by not doing business with them.

2006-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Correction

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I fell for a good one. I quoted George Bush in an earlier post, claiming that he said this: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." —George W. Bush. Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001 Jason pointed out in the comments that this quote never happened. I did some research and to the best of my knowledge, I believe he is right. Lesson learned. Liberal websites can spread lies just as easily as their NeoCon counterparts. So George Bush never flip-flopped on this issue. Finding Osama Bin Laden was never a stated priority.

2006-08-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Ben Tripp

Whenever I do "research" I'm always surprised. This time, I ran across an article written by an old buddy of mine, Ben Tripp. Ben and I used to work together at Disney. He has reached a state of quasi-celebrity, while I am languishing in my role of abject non-celebrity. Anyway, I found his article here. The funniest quote of all: "Jesus did not have to worry about weapons of mass destruction--there were none, unless you count the incident wherein Samson "found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith" (Judges 15:15,16), which I think we can discount as hyperbole. If anybody is going to slay 10,000 with the jawbone of an ass, it's George Bush II." WTG Ben!

2006-08-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Custodians of chaos

I just found the following excerpt by Kurt Vonnegut. I identified with it so much, I am posting it here. _________________________________________________________________________________ 06/17/06 -- "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ. The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one. We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. "As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. "As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all? When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. And so on. Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff. For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break! It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution. But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable. I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale". George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences. To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it! Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything. PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage. So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation. They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass! There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president. The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books. While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year. In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed. In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were. And with good reason. In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want. Piece of cake. In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake. The O'Reilly Factor. So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times. Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there. Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you? Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine. My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse." Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own? © 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without a Country: : A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13659.htm