(crossposted from the frontpage of My Left Wing)
Note to the Copyright Police: Every image employed in this diary is either in the public domain, used with permission, an original piece of artwork to which I own the copyright or falls under the doctrine of "fair use." If you think you can prove otherwise, then knock yourself out. :-)
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The fish rots from the head down as the saying goes, but make no mistake; the whole damned fish is rotten. And yes, I’m talking about our government.
(more below the fold...)
Our government, as portrayed to us through the lens of the MSM, is an elaborate fantasy constructed of a million of lies and half-truths all of which are intended to keep us acquiescent and committed to the status quo. After all, they’ve got to keep us all down on the farm somehow or another –and they’ve gotten really good at it.
We are told that we are free, but we’re not; that we live in a democracy, but we don’t; and that it’s all for our own good, but it isn’t.
Freedom does exist in this country, but what they don’t tell you is that it exists on a sliding scale – the more money you have, the freer you are. If you are poor or of average means, you are a virtual slave, kept that way by low wages, ravenous banks and credit agencies, taxation without representation and the ridiculously high cost of living. Your function is to make those above you wealthy, and these days you are expected to do so without hope of a retirement or pension plan (one you can trust anyway). Most of us will work till we drop and death and weekends will be the only freedom we ever know. What really sucks is that this is all by design and has to do with a bunch of filthy-rich greedheads who can’t help feeling like they just don’t have enough.
If This Ain't Fascism...WTF is it?
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"
~ Benito Mussolini
People resist the notion that America has become a fascist dictatorship. (Okay, so maybe it’s ‘soft’ fascism, neo-fascism or ‘dictatorship lite’.) Perhaps it offends their sense of ‘what ought to be’. It offends my sense of ‘what ought to be’ too, but I have no trouble believing it. My liberal reality bias trumps my sense of ‘what ought to be’ every single time. I try to avoid cognitive dissonance and truthiness. I much prefer to look the devil squarely in the face and call a pig a pig, a war criminal a war criminal, and a fascist dictator a fascist dictator.
Bush defiant over Iraq plan despite strong opposition 2007
Bush's Defiant State of the Union 2007
Bush Defiant Amid WMD Report 2004
Bush defiant on 'illegal' Guantanamo Bay trials
Bush defiant with `mainstream' choice 2005
Bush Defiant After New Terrorist Threats
Bush Defiant Ahead of Visit to Britain 2001
BUSH DEFIANT ON IRAN 2005
I could go on and on with this but perhaps I’ve made my point – Bush is bullish on defiance. He doesn’t give a flying flip what any of us want.
In his article, Fascism Anyone? Lawrence Britt analyzes seven fascist regimes including Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia to derive his now famous 14 Points of Fascism.
- Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
- Disdain for the importance of human rights.
- Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
- The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
- Rampant sexism.
- A controlled mass media.
- Obsession with national security.
- Religion and ruling elite tied together.
- Power of corporations protected.
- Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
- Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
- Obsession with crime and punishment.
- Rampant cronyism and corruption.
- Fraudulent elections.
I’m not going to go through these point by point. The correlations should be obvious. If you haven’t read Britt’s article, I highly recommend it.
Phony Leaders, Phony Wars, Phony Choices
Our ‘leaders’ make a big pretense of serving we the people, but they (for the most part) really only serve the people with the big fat checkbooks, the Wall Streeters, the military-industrial complex, the war profiteers, the Carlyle Group and Halliburton crowd.
On a good day I want to make exceptions for the handful of heroes we have left...
...and on a bad day I can only wish a pox on both their houses.
It's Way Too Late for Nonbinding Resolutions on Iraq
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted February 2, 2007.
This week, Senate Democrats agreed with key Republicans on a watered-down resolution opposing Bush's troop escalation. It may be smart politics, but it's bad policy.
Source
Dems help sink real opposition to Bush's Iraq
Posted by David Sirota
SNIP
Nowhere is this more apparent than among top congressional Democrats. As we saw earlier this week, just months after the public delivered a strong anti-war mandate to Washington, top House Democrats are demanding that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) take a "go slow" approach to Iraq - Washingtonese for a "do nothing" approach. Now yesterday, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-MBNA) led a group of Democrats on his committee in voting down a bill that would have forced President Bush to get congressional authorization for an Iraq escalation. Ignoring basic historical precedent as laid out by Rick Perlstein in Salon, Biden instead championed a toothless, non-binding resolution.
But it gets worse - much worse.
Alternet article
I’ve come to admire David Sirota, both for the quality of his writing and the courage he exhibits in speaking truth to power. This quality (IMHO) is the highest quality one can possess in these dark times. Fearlessness in the rejection of tyranny is a great American tradition and if anything saves us it will be this aspect of our national character that runs deep in all of our veins. When enough of us screw our courage to the sticking point and face down the tyranny that threatens us, then there will be hope for America once again.
Read and perhaps share my admiration as David goes after the guilty like a pitbull.
People Party vs. Money Party: Who's Who Among the Democrats
By David Sirota
The fact that our nation's politics is divided not between Democrats and Republicans but between the People Party and the Money Party is obvious to anyone who looks at the political system honestly (which is to say, not most journalists or Washington political hacks). Calls for "bipartisanship" and faux "centrism" that has nothing to do with the actual center of American public opinion are most often moves to prevent the political debate from analyzing the People vs. Money divide that actually fuels our politics. We already have plenty of "bipartisanship" -- Republicans and a faction of Democrats who regularly join hands to screw over the vast majority of Americans.
Many people ask me who? Who are the leading members of both sides of the actual divide? The answer is that there is no official list because no one is forced to formally declare their allegiance to the People Party or the Money Party. But it is fairly obvious which lawmakers in the new majority have specifically defined themselves on economic justice issues.
Alternet article
You may have noticed a distinct lack of such courage on the part of the vast majority of our politicians. Oh there’s false courage like when Arlen Specter gets all huffy with Bush in public then quietly backs down a few days later and goes back to supporting the boss, or all the others who make noise of resistance but then roll over and betray the American people with a smile, the ones who’ve supported this war and let the president have his way in virtually every instance.
These politicians of both parties have enabled the unitary executive and the neocon/fascist take-over of our country. They have betrayed their constituents and let our nation slide tragically into war on the basis of nothing. They speak shamelessly of victory in Iraq, of winning ‘the war’ in Iraq. This is nothing short of aiding and abetting a crime. This so-called war is nothing but a brutal mugging.
This ‘ war’ is as phony as a three-dollar bill.
Allow me to quote me of my favorite writers. :-)
It was all a hoax folks. Remember the Downing Street memos? Bush and Blair blatantly fabricated a scurrilous pack of lies out of thin air to justify the invasion for their own nefarious purposes. There was no basis for it in reality. It was illegal on its face. There is such a thing as International Law after all.
We are a signatory nation to both the Nuremberg Accords and the Geneva Convention Against Aggressive War. Contrary to what so many have said, Congress authorizing the invasion doesn’t make it legal - it makes Congress complicit. They’re ALL criminals and the invasion and occupation of Iraq is nothing more than a lowly crime committed on a grand scale.
You don’t win a crime. There is no ‘victory’ to be had. We can continue to commit the crime or we can quit committing the crime. Those are our only two options.
But none of that will stop Bushco or their enablers. They are so close to getting their mitts on that Iraqi oil that they aren’t about to quit now – no matter what we say.
~ OPOL
Minimum Rage
This trillion-dollar crime that has also cost upwards of a million lives is as much a crime against America as it is a crime against Iraq, and soon to be Iran and possibly Syria. The trillion dollars (or possibly two) is being sucked out of our treasury and into the pockets of thugs, thieves, and well-connected war profiteers, most of whom are Americans – and friends of you-know-who.
The 'War on Terror' Is Really the War on Our Republic
By Robert Parry
From the beginning of the "war on terror," George W. Bush has lied to the American people about the goals, motivation and even the identity of the enemy -- a propaganda exercise that continued through his 2007 State of the Union Address and that is sounding the death knell for the Republic.
Alternet article
Here’s what our handpicked Vice President of Iraq recently said about the invasion...
U.S. invasion was "idiot decision"-Iraq vice president
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an "idiot decision" and Iraqi troops now need to secure Baghdad to ensure the country's future, Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Thursday.
"Iraq was put under occupation, which was an idiot decision," Mahdi said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Source
He was being way too kind if you ask me. This war is much more than an ‘idiot decision’ (though it was that), it is a travesty.
Those who speak of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq as if it were a legitimate enterprise, or who rationalize or minimize the criminal actions of the neocon fascists are as much enemies of the state as the neocon fascists themselves: apologists, enablers, liars and spin-doctors – traitors to us all.
The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse
By Norman Solomon
President Bush may be a headless horseman. But the biggest problem is what he rode in on.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a good name for it 40 years ago: "The madness of militarism."
We can blame Bush all we want -- and he does hold the reins right now -- but his main enablers these days are the fastidious public servants in Congress. They keep preparing the hay, freshening the water, oiling the saddle, even while criticizing the inappropriately jocular rider. And when the band plays "Hail to the Jockey," most of the grown-up stable boys and girls can't help saluting.
The people who actually live in Iraq have their own opinions, of course. UPI reported at the end of December that a new poll, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, found that "about 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the U.S.-led invasion than it is today." Meanwhile, according to a CNN poll last month, 11 percent of Americans support sending more U.S. troops to Iraq.
Source
There’s been a lot of talk this week about the mission in Iraq.
Troops Driven by Sense of 'Incredibly Important Mission,' Officer Says
By Mark Finkelstein
CNSNews.com Correspondent
February 01, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The political debate roiling the United States over the war in Iraq does not affect the focus of the troops on the ground or their mission, a senior military officer said Thursday.
"One of the most important intangibles that does not make it back through the mainstream media filter [is] the sense of mission and the morale of the people who are serving here," Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I) communications director Rear Admiral Mark I. Fox, told Cybercast News Service.
"It's not every day that you have the opportunity to leave your fingerprints on a great work. This is one of those times where everybody here understands what an incredibly important mission we're engaged in," he said during a conference call from Baghdad.
Source
Mission? What mission? There is no mission in Iraq – unless you want to count stealing the Iraqi oil as somehow being a legitimate mission. We have sent our troops into harm’s way to service the greed of the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton crowd. To pretend otherwise is an insult to our service men and women and a betrayal of America.
We can’t win or lose in Iraq; we’ve already lost. We (or rather those of our politicians who voted for the AUMF) lost the moment they allowed an insane and out of control ‘President’ to invade a sovereign nation who had done us no harm and who threatened us not one whit, justified by nothing but a putrid pack of blatantly obvious lies.
We can no more win the ‘war’ in Iraq than we can win the ‘war’ on science. There is no victory to be had for these are not wars, they are crimes, the former a crime against the people of Iraq and the people of the United States of America, and the latter a crime against humanity itself.
And now they are going to attack Iran on even flimsier grounds and against the wishes of the vast majority of the American people and virtually everyone else in the world. Look who’s helping them now...
Hillary Clinton calls Iran a threat to U.S., Israel
The Associated Press
Published: February 1, 2007
NEW YORK: Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel's greatest threats, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said "no option can be taken off the table" when dealing with that nation.
"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. "In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table."
Source
Will the hypocrisy never end?
As Mike Stark is fond of saying, these people are NOT our friends - and Hillary does NOT deserve to be President (I said that). No one should ever be allowed to steal it or buy it again – and buying it is exactly what she has in mind.
Clinton Setting a $1 Million Goal for Donors
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
Published: February 2, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is establishing record-setting goals for presidential campaign fund-raising, her advisers say, asking donors to raise at least $1 million for the honor of being in her top echelon of supporters.
That million-dollar benchmark is 10 times the amount that President Bush’s "Pioneers" were expected to raise in his 2000 race; at that time, the Pioneers’ $100,000 goal was considered sizable.
Source
They all do it. The Big Money game is the game we have allowed to evolve, but Hillary’s push to just out and out buy it has taken on a unique character.
Hillary To Donors: "No Money To Anybody Else"
Hillary Clinton is personally putting out the word that she has no intention of sharing the wealth: "She's calling all the big-hitter fundraisers and saying, 'I want you to understand: NO money to anybody else. You cannot play both sides of the street,'" in the '08 presidential race, says a longtime Democratic operative who has worked for the Clintons in the past but turned down a role in the current campaign, and is so far sitting this one out.
And what's the reaction been? "People don't like it, but they're afraid of her." Yet the far more palpable fear for Democrats, discussed constantly, is that she'll have so much money she'll sail to the nomination.
Source
So while Hillary plots to buy the Presidency, Bush tries to buy his way out of doing anything about the biggest crisis to ever confront humanity.
Bush-Linked Group Offers Cash To Debunk UN Climate Report
From the wire:
Posted at 7:45 PM on February 1, 2007.
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Source
And of course while our degenerate rich play their little games with our lives and our planet, the rich get ever richer...
Exxon's 'outlandish' earnings spark furor
With UN poised to blame global warming on fossil fuels, firm posts $40-billion profit
SHAWN MCCARTHY
From Friday's Globe and Mail
OTTAWA — The world's largest publicly owned oil company announced yesterday the largest corporate profit ever, but news of its near $40-billion (U.S.) windfall in 2006 sparked an angry backlash, coming on the eve of a major report blaming the use of fossil fuels for wreaking devastation on the planet.
Exxon Mobil Corp. was accused yesterday of using some of those unprecedented profits to fund a campaign to create skepticism about the impact of climate change and opposition to policies that would reduce the use of gasoline and other oil products.
Source
...while the rest of us just get robbed.
GOP tries to kill minimum wage
Posted by Bob Geiger
Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO), evidently convinced that he was beating a dead horse by continuing his quest to ban flag-burning and discriminate against gay people, announced this month that he would not seek reelection in 2008 and the thought of having so little time left to screw the working poor from a comfy U.S. Senate seat must have just been eating him alive.
Allard, who has voted against a minimum wage increase more often than Fox News smears Barack Obama, went for broke this week and introduced a bill that would have eliminated the Federal Minimum Wage entirely and left the wage rate for the lowest-paid workers to each state.
In Kansas, this would mean that workers would revert to the state-mandated minimum wage of $2.65 per hour, which is currently superseded by the federal minimum of $5.15.
Source
And robbed again.
Bush administration seeks $245B for wars
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.
Source
And again.
Cost balloons when 'surge' support troops are counted
POSTED: 2:13 a.m. EST, February 2, 2007
• Cost could go as high as $27 billion, Congressional Budget Office says
• White House has estimated cost of troop increase at $5.6 billion
• Pentagon mentions only combat troops, budget office says
• 15,000 to 28,000 support troops needed, CBO report states
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A report from the Congressional Budget Office says President Bush's plan for a troop increase in Iraq could cost up to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment.
The plan could mean sending thousands of support troops in addition to the 20,000-plus combat troops the Defense Department has set for deployment.
The numbers come in a letter to Rep. John Spratt, chairman of the House Budget
Source
And again...
Will Senate Dems torpedo a plan for nonpartisan election officials?
Posted by Joshua Holland
Few things make my blood boil quite like Democrats dealing away American democracy for some small electoral advantage.
Here's a potential example* -- something to watch -- from The Hill ...
Congressional Democrats, including those with executive-branch aspirations, may offer significant resistance to a Democratic bill that would affect how presidential campaigns operate in 2008.
Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would control and prevent chief state elections officials from actively participating in federal campaigns, responding to the involvement of the Florida and Ohio secretaries of state -- former Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) and Ken Blackwell, respectively -- in the Bush presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004. However, with Democrats acquiring a majority of statehouses after the recent midterm elections, including those in several battleground states, some party members may object to, or undercut, the legislation before the 2008 races.
Source
And again..
Personal savings drop to a 74-year low
Development comes as 78 million boomers nearing retirement
WASHINGTON - People once again spent everything they made and then some last year, pushing the personal savings rate to the lowest level since the Great Depression more than seven decades ago.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was lower than a negative 0.4 percent in 2005 and was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.
Source
I’m thinking that eventually we’ll get tired of this crap, though I am perplexed as to why it’s taking us so long. A lot of progressives are slow to come around it seems. A number of them still don’t want to admit that the Repubs stole the last two Presidential elections for example. At this point in history, if that’s your point of view, the burden of proof is on you.
There are other much darker and more nefarious events that deserve to be questioned anew as well. More about that in tomorrow’s installment, Part II – Come the Revolution.
And finally, a hearty thank you to everyone who marched on January 27th, and a huge shout-out to my new hero, George Soros, for these delightful and timely words:
"We (America) have to go through a certain de-Nazification process."