TSA's groping is torture

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Saturday November 20, 2010 · 5:05 AM PST

2010/11/20 · 05:05

The purpose of torture in war, like rape, is total psychological dominance. When the Bush administration instigated this egregious policy Americans barely raised a peep. We had become a nation of zombies. The Bush administration understood that we Americans, and Congress in particular, had failed the test of citizenship and they would be allowed a free hand over there, and over here. America had no courage to stop them. With the TSA groping, Obama is Bush-lite, which might even be considered worse.

Bernie Quigley

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Wednesday June 18, 2008 · 5:32 AM PDT

2008/06/18 · 05:32

Politics is Power. A look at the trajectory of politics in America since Yalta shows a rise of the Power Principle manifest primarily in the Republican Party; Eisenhower and Reagan on a trajectory which is likely to continue. True Democrats like Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, interspersed regularly with levity and playfulness; the yin dancing through the yang, but always in yang’s house. Some, including myself see Obama as the new JFK; some say the new Lincoln. I have a friend who says Obama is the Chosen One – the Aquarian - and will lead a movement to last 2,000 years. But in the perspective of recent history, the most likely scenario is a happy one-term affair, like the breathing space between Watergate and Reagan, a time when the Republican Party was seen as dead in the water, as it is seen today. But Watergate was the best thing to happen to the Republicans. It allowed them to dump the trash and rebuilt within a decade, to dominate the political scene for the next 25 years.

Obama can awaken the new century, but he needs to build a fully original party; one which leaves history behind entirely. And for that he needs Al Gore.

Bernie Quigley

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Sunday May 18, 2008 · 10:20 AM PDT

2008/05/18 · 10:20

A recent article in the Washington Post says top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been privately getting together to converge the two teams. It claims there are growing reports that the only way to repair the rift between the two parties is for Obama to pick a top Clinton surrogate as his VP nominee:

"There’s a gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names (Ohio Gov. Ted) Strickland, (Indiana Sen. Even) Bayh, and (retired Gen.) Wes Clark almost constantly, and it’s no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."

In making his decision, Obama might consider the importance of the historic moment. As he has been called a transitional candidate, so we are today in a transitional awakening – a springpoint of historical dimensions.

Bernie Quigley

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Monday May 05, 2008 · 10:05 AM PDT

2008/05/05 · 10:05

Hillary is in Jungian terms a doppelganger - that is, she is a Shadow agent of a "positive" charge and the positive charge in this element is Bill Clinton. The Shadow is always "'anti-Power' Power"; - it takes its thrill in opposition whereas the original (Bill) opposed as well but with its own organic light: those who liked Bill liked him because he brought a unique new perspective to the world which had the secondary aspect of pissing people off who were not of his winning team - those who like Hillary like her merely because she pisses people off. Although she suggests the original force of her husband, she does not possess it herself; - she possesses its Shadow. Like Madame Mao. Like Yoko Ono. Hillary and her supporters are part of the "collective Shadow" of the Democratic Party - and Bill now manifests that Shadow. Lying and deception are part of the Shadow's "truth" and its aspiring artfulness. The Shadow is not necessarily evil in itself, it is the trailing end of a powerful force. Nixon was the Shadow of Eisenhower; Boy George is the Shadow of Reagan. Hillary is the Shadow of Bill. In politics, it always ends badly with the Shadow. See, George Clooney in Michael Clayton:

"I am Shiva, the god of Death."

Bernie Quigley

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Saturday April 05, 2008 · 4:52 AM PDT

2008/04/05 · 04:52

The Clintons this week revealed their tax returns and claimed $108 million over the past eight years, gleaned primarily from speaking engagements where the faithful dole it out and Bill Clinton commands up to $250,00 per speech. What is remarkable about their returns is that they claimed only $10.2 million in charitable deductions over eight years. But it turns out that small amount was in fact dolled out to their own charity: They gave the money to themselves. And further, they gave none of it out until last year when Senator Clinton declared her Presidency.

NYT's article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/...

Bernie Quigley

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Friday April 04, 2008 · 6:18 AM PDT

2008/04/04 · 06:18

In this election cycle we are seeing the end of things and the beginning of things. As Ted Ford, an economist and a California Democrat running for office in Sacramento put it:

The phenomenon of the year is a clear old vs. new divide cleaving the electorate. The Clintons and their lies will be totally repudiated in the end, as will the Bush lies. Both groups are corrupt and finished. This year will see a shredding of old ways, a complete break from the past. Perhaps this is the true new beginning of the millennium -- same as World War I ended the 19th century in 1914. People under 35 care nothing of Bush or Clinton style politics.

Bernie Quigley

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Friday March 28, 2008 · 8:04 AM PDT

2008/03/28 · 08:04

Time this week presents a perspective from Joe Klein titled Is Al Gore the Answer?. Three things: A. It looks today like Obama has it; B. It looks like Elvis will not (cannot) leave the building so maybe Obama doesn’t have it; C. It looks like one of those times in history when the Trickster is at hand and anything can (will) happen. In this environment Klein brings in a more or less classic scenario: A brokered convention in which a third individual appealing to all to some degree is bought in and in this case that could be (should be) Al Gore.

Bernie Quigley

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Saturday March 22, 2008 · 2:07 PM PDT

2008/03/22 · 14:07

From Sam Stein at The Huffington Post:

MSNBC is reporting that on the campaign trail today in Charlotte, North Carolina, the former president said a general election matchup between his wife, Sen. Clinton, and Sen. John McCain would be between "two people who love this country" without "all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

Bill Clinton has applied propaganda strategies like we have not seen since the Jim Crow days, implying that Obama would be unfit to be President of the United States through innuendo, mnemonic slander and word and theme association, because he is black.

Understandably, it has been a bad week for the Clintons. The country as a whole has been through a major cultural turning due to a speech given by Barack Obama that will be remembered through the ages. Until now Obama was compared to Jack Kennedy. Now he is being compared to Lincoln. Can’t be good when the comments coming out of the mouths of Clinton apparatchiks call to mind Paulie Walnuts.

Bernie Quigley

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Tuesday March 11, 2008 · 9:06 AM PDT

2008/03/11 · 09:06

Bill Clinton and his Decepticons are now actually running plaintiff wife Hillary for Vice President on an Obama ticket. They can feel it is up for them and Obama will eventually take it. So the chant this week of Unstoppable is to pitch them – Hillary and Obama - as an undeniable unit; bringing them together and bringing Hillary (and Bill, don’t cha know) on a new last chance strategy; a graded 12 year ride – Hillary as VP in ’08, and President in ’12 and ‘16.

Bernie Quigley

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Tuesday February 19, 2008 · 5:40 AM PST

2008/02/19 · 05:40

Issues of time lag were written about best perhaps by Kafka, who came from the darkest place and lived in the shadow of the castle. Kafka’s characters want to bring back the ancient time – the torturer in the short story In the Penal Colony, Wilhelm II and George Bush – when time has passed them by. France, living in its own shadow, has a tendency. It finally gets onto the rising Ronald Reagan era – building big, useless Airbus planes that nobody wants and electing Sarko – just as the Reagan Era has fallen into twilight.

But Kafka would find a true home in Kosovo. The region is vortex to Europe’s Four Grandfathers: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Islam. And ancestral Jews as well. And they all hate each other. But I blame the trouble today on Frank Zappa. He trumped Muhammad, the Black Madonna and even Joseph Stalin’s dark charm in the region’s hinterland.

Bernie Quigley

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Saturday February 09, 2008 · 3:46 AM PST

2008/02/09 · 03:46

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

Shortly before he disappeared into the night, Wesley Clark demanded that the beginnings of the war on Iraq be dug up and found and publicly explored and explained before they got buried too deep. It is a good idea. Let’s have televised exploratory hearings. Let them be vast and let them last years and let them begin now.

It is an important idea, and now that the Government has admitted to torture, let’s also begin as well hearings and investigations into these and possibly other American war crimes. Not to get all judgmental, but for myself, I’d like to see something a little less touchy-feely than the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Something more widespread. Something more akin to the McCarthy Hearings. Or better still, something like France’s war crime trials of the storied Vichy Swine which took TIME’s Man of the Year in 1931, Pierre Laval, and left him vomiting before a firing squad in 1945.

Bernie Quigley

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Tuesday January 29, 2008 · 9:16 AM PST

2008/01/29 · 09:16

In her excellent response to the President’s State of the Union speech last night, Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Governor of Kansas, made reference to the new generation. Sebelius referred to Tom Brokaw’s "greatest generation" but made the case that the "greatest generation" is not behind us but ahead of us.

We are at that classic 60-year shift between the third and fourth post-war generation; a time, say historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, when the country falls apart and reformulates – saved by the bell – by the fourth and last post-war generation which begins the world again.

This week we saw the awakening of the new political generation when Caroline Kennedy and her Uncle Ted endorsed Barack Obama for President.

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Bambi Rising: Obama vs. 3rd Party - Ventura, Barr, Gravel

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Hillary Running for VP: Black Man on the Phone

Kafka in Kosovo: Frank Zappa is Dead

War Crime Trials for Mr. Jones

Kennedy, Obama, Webb, Sebelius: The New Democrats