Bush Helps the Enemy

The Bush administration is considering a "surge" of troop numbers in Iraq. What is a surge? It is a temporary increase of troops. Given that a surge only lasts a short time, it is an increase of troops with a timetable for withdrawal. According to President Bush, timetables help the enemy. All they have to do is wait out the surge and it will be over. Therefore, won't a surge in troops help the enemy?

The real tragedy of Ted Haggard

The real tragedy of Ted Haggard was not that he was gay or a drug user. The real tragedy was that he used the power of religion to influence his followers into believing that war was a Christian necessity.
His flock will probably write off his behavioral aberrations as the work of the devil. Maybe he was just a gay man who played a role because of the power, influence, fame, and money it provided him.
Ted was in constant contact with the Neocons at the White House. Maybe the Christianity he was preaching was not the verses of Mark but the gospel of Rove. The talking points headed down the calling tree from Karl Rove to Ted to the National Association of Evangelicals to the pastors to the calling cells to 30 million people.
I won't judge Ted for his lies, his homosexuality, his drug use, or the role he played. But, to turn the Prince of Peace into the God of War in his followers minds is a real societal tragedy. Why was the Christian community not outraged by the endorsement of preemptive war, a policy called the supreme international criminal act by the Nuremberg trials?
If his followers believe that the devil was responsible for his sinning behavior, can't they believe that his support of preemptive war was just another trick of the fallen angel?

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi

Free Market Boogie

We give our money to the Saudis for their oil.
The Saudis fund the Iraqi Sunni insurgents.
The Iraqi Sunni insurgents kill Americans.
Thank you, America, for paying to have our soldiers killed.
Can't a free market guy make a buck?

Reinstating the draft

I support reinstating the draft, only if the draft did not allow special privileges for wealthy individuals. The wealthy chicken hawks, like President Bush, who support war will not fight it themselves or enlist their children to fight. If they were forced to put their children in harm's way, it might not be so easy for our politicians to declare war.

Dems have power, now use it

Dear Democratic Congress:
Congratulations on a decisive victory. Bringing back integrity to Congress includes bringing back accountability. Bush and Cheney need to be held accountable for the lies they told to get this country into war in Iraq, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people and costing a trillion dollars.
You no longer have the excuse of not having control of both houses of Congress. To say that you will not hold them accountable and just work with them is tantamount to being an accomplice to their manipulation.

The Death of Our Democracy

It is time to sound the funeral dirge. It is a time of lament and sorrow. Having your vote count is the basis of democracy. When the Governator came from a future where machines ruled the world in the movie Terminator, we thought it was science fiction. Now the voting machine rules the world. Now vote totals are subject to no paper trails, hackable machines, and lack of verification.
The then CEO of Diebold, a large voting machine vendor, had given large sums to the Bush campaign and wrote that he would bring the vote home for Bush in 2004. Diebold's machines are proven to be hackable.
I could never imagine we would be living in a corporate/totalitarian state - but, here we are.
All those people who agonized and died for the banner of freedom and we end up with democracy being destroyed in a second with a keystroke.
Woe is us.

Rove Attacks!

With the Republican corruption scandals spiraling out of control, spin master Karl Rove and his media minions have begun a counter attack on the Democrats. Spoken in the same newscast breath with the indictments, convictions, and ethics violations of Delay, Cunningham, Ney, Foley, et al. are the admonishments of Sen. Harry Reid. You make the call. Which is more pernicious an ethics violation - money laundering of millions, taking bribes of millions to influence legislation, sexual predation of children, or tipping workers at a convention. The $3,000 over three years that Reid paid out of his campaign funds as gratuities is not enough to cover one night's comped meals for Rove at Abramoff's Signature restaurant. An uninformed viewer will look at the news cast and think the Democrat's violations are just as bad. As usual, big corporate media which supports the Republican war machine, will give each violation equal air time while some are much more egregious than others.

Neocon Manipulation of Evangelicals

The neocons in control of the Republican party have won elections by manipulating the evangelical Christian vote. They use issues like gay marriage and prayer in schools to prey on the "moral values" of the evangelicals. But, there are other important moral issues here. I do not seem to remember Jesus saying that it was acceptable to attack another country and cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. I do not remember Jesus saying that the rich should get richer while the poor suffer.
David Kuo's new book Tempting Faith, paints a picture of the neocons pandering to the evangelicals for their votes while sniggering about their sanity behind the scenes and not keeping their promises about what they will accomplish.
I am not saying that the evangelical Christians should vote Democrat, Republican, Green, or Independent because of this manipulation, only that they should consider all the issues and their morality before blindly being steered by the neocons.

They Just Don't Suspect the Court Jester

In Frank Rich's new book The Greatest Story Ever Sold , he says that the only journalists who looked skeptically at the facts before the Iraq war were the fake news journalists (John Stewart, etc.). It is as it has always been, the universal blindspot of the arrogant elite is their failure to grasp the message and the power of the message of entertainment.

In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
- George Orwell -

Let's Cut and Run in '06

The neocons have had a great ploy to manipulate public opinion in saying the opposition would have us "cut and run". If a ship you are on is sinking and you will drown if you "stay the course" then "cut and run". If a car you are in has no brakes and staying the course will get you killed then cut and run. If you stay the course in a country that you have invaded to stop terrorism and it is making terrorism worse, you should cut and run. When staying the course puts us on the verge of causing more deaths than the dictator you overthrew, then cut and run. If staying the course is a strategy of installing democracy at gun point, then cut and run. It is very easy to say stay the course when you are only sacrificing the lives of poor strangers and your children are safe at home. It is easy to say stay the course when you and the friends around you grow rich and the poor are forced to join the military and risk their lives to support their families. As a matter of fact, I think cut and run is one of the best ideas I have ever heard. I think it should be a campaign slogan. "Let's cut and run in '06".

Manipulating with fear

The logic of "fight Al-qaeda there instead of fighting them here" is debatable. I think there are more options possible, but for the sake of argument let us say these are our choices.
To fight them there, we spend billions of dollars to send poor, young soldiers to their front door so they can be picked off in a shooting gallery. Al-qaeda does not have to have any transportation and very little money to kill the Americans that our government has been so kind to transport to them.
So, let's look at the other option. If we fight them here, how will they get here? Al-qaeda has no planes or boats. What will they do, swim?
And, just because we are fighting them there, it is still possible for them to fight us here anyway. I do admit it is much easier to kill Americans who have been brought to you than it is to go half way around the world to kill some. But, they can still come here while they are fighting there.
Isn't this just a fear ploy - pictures in your head of masses of Al-qaeda fighters coming up your street - to use fear to manipulate voters? We heard this same kind of rhetoric when invading Iraq - mushroom clouds and poison gas. The Republican party has fooled us before with this rhetoric, and as President Bush has said "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

God's Army

Onward Christian soldiers,
Marching on to kill.
With the cross of Jesus,
Ringing up the till.

The Devil at the U.N.

"I can still smell the sulfur..."
Venezualan President Hugo Chavez speaking at the United Nations after saying that the devil (George Bush) was in this place yesterday and crossing himself several times.

wtc negligence

I heard on the news last night that 70% of workers on the world trade center construction site have chronic respiratory problems.
Who are the people that are running this country? Do they think science is to be ignored? Or, do they just not care about the lives of the poor? Why is no one held accountable for this mass suffering of human life?
Take a look at the scorecard.
We have attacked a country that had no weapons of mass destruction and was of no military threat to the United States, killing thousands of innocent people.
We have botched the occupation of Iraq with gross incompetence.
We have cut the funds to repair the levees in New Orleans, causing the worst natural disaster in American history.
We have mishandled the response to Katrina, causing death and suffering to millions of our own people.
We have spent billions on wars and mistakes that could have been used to the benefit of humanity.
We have let 2 million refugees in Darfur rot in their camps.
Our country is being run by people who have been grossly negligent. Yet, no one is held accountable. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, sicker, and neglected.
The rich and powerful who put the poor in harms way should be made to pay for their decisions.
The people who sent the unprotected workers into the world trade center site should have toxic waste dumped on their beaches in the Hamptons, so they can watch their families suffer, the way the poor have been made to suffer.

abandon hope

I went and heard Jan Schakowsky speak tonight She is of a one-sided single mind about Lebanon. I asked hear whether she would vow to bring a resolution to impeach the Bush administration if the Democrats won control of the House in November. She answered without answering, saying that the Democrats wouldn't get control of the Senate, so it wouldn't do any good anyway. She did say that Democrats would get subpoena power.
If this congresswoman is considered to be from the progressive left, we are all in trouble.

Far too long for snakes

8/6/2006
"Times are gone
For honest men
And sometimes
Far too long
For snakes...."
- Black Hole Sun, Soundgarden, 1994

Ignoring 5000 years of Middle East history is a losing proposition.
There is no military solution to the problem.
Man's inherited tribal instincts were important in success of the species when man was in the early hunter-gatherer stage.
Ironically, in the era of monstrous weapons this tribal instinct has become destructive on an hideous scale.
Only when man can learn to shift tribal identity from an "us versus the enemy" to a we here on Spaceship Earth, will we begin to have civilization.