Thursday, February 23, 2006
Why I'm an Agnostic...
All this crazy crap going on in Iraq due to the desecration of a mosque, the image of that fellow in Georgia screaming about "his rock" when the ten commandments flap was happening, cartoons, etc. People get killed over religious items? I thought that the true measure of spirituality was, uh, spiritual, and not physical! Items such as mosques, churches and other icons should not hold that much power over people's reactions, but they do.....
All this crazy crap going on in Iraq due to the desecration of a mosque, the image of that fellow in Georgia screaming about "his rock" when the ten commandments flap was happening, cartoons, etc. People get killed over religious items? I thought that the true measure of spirituality was, uh, spiritual, and not physical! Items such as mosques, churches and other icons should not hold that much power over people's reactions, but they do.....
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
When I asked for Another Shot, What I Really Meant Was...
Was booze involved with the V.P.'s little quail hunt over the weekend? Follow this interesting bit from Skippy:
according to this post at the democratic underground, a recent story on the msnbc website about the cheney shooting had a reference to alcohol at the hunting party:
armstrong also told nbc news that she does not believe alcohol was involved in the accident. she says she believes no one that day was drinking, although she says there may have been beer available during a picnic lunch that preceded the incident. "there may be a beer or two in there," she said...
but now, when you bring up that story, all references to beer have been deleted.
check out this google cache of search items, indicating that the words "there may be a beer or two in there cheney" can be found in that same story.
laurence o'donnell doesn't say that there was alcohol invovled, but he does ask how do we know there wasn't, since it was 18 hours between the incident and when cheney talked to law enforcement.
Which would give the Veep time to get that 'ol chaser out of his system before talking to those pesky law enforcement folks. Oliver Stone, your next movie is writing itself!
Was booze involved with the V.P.'s little quail hunt over the weekend? Follow this interesting bit from Skippy:
according to this post at the democratic underground, a recent story on the msnbc website about the cheney shooting had a reference to alcohol at the hunting party:
armstrong also told nbc news that she does not believe alcohol was involved in the accident. she says she believes no one that day was drinking, although she says there may have been beer available during a picnic lunch that preceded the incident. "there may be a beer or two in there," she said...
but now, when you bring up that story, all references to beer have been deleted.
check out this google cache of search items, indicating that the words "there may be a beer or two in there cheney" can be found in that same story.
laurence o'donnell doesn't say that there was alcohol invovled, but he does ask how do we know there wasn't, since it was 18 hours between the incident and when cheney talked to law enforcement.
Which would give the Veep time to get that 'ol chaser out of his system before talking to those pesky law enforcement folks. Oliver Stone, your next movie is writing itself!
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
No, "gullible" is not in the dictionary.
Just ask the American public after it offers its overwhelming support for an airstrike against Iran, which is imminent. Give it some months, perhaps into the summer or autumn.
The mainstream media, hardly "liberal", acting as an agent of propaganda for the Bush administration, will continue to abdicate its function, concede the facts, and "report" all the misinformation that's needed for the president and his thugs to get whatever they want. Karl Rove remains ever-aware of America's addiction to violence at a massive scale. Gullible Americans... oops, that's not a word now, is it?
Condolessa Rice, an Exxon oil tanker named for her, never shy to speak for the entire world, tells Iran: "The world will not stand by...." Rumsfeld discusses diplomacy, but utters "The military option is never off the table." Iran is referred to the U.N., Bolton will mock the process, saying the U.N. is impotent, and the president will then act on the "last resort" of a military strike, as diplomatic efforts will be "exhausted." Once done, appeals will be made to "support the troops" and personal attacks will be hurled at anyone who questions the administration's motives. Funding for the action will be filed as "emergency" and won't figure into the Pentagon's operating budget and the president will routinely bully the Congress for a blank check. With time, the episode will generate a self-propelling combustion and killing will continue simply because killing had begun.
We've seen it all. And we'll see it all again. (Just read "Rebuilding America's Defenses" for the entire blueprint/gameplan. It's all there, with neo-con authorship, a wish list of American global dominance enough to make any caring person choke.)
Democrats will be intimidated -- spineless idiots they are, Hillary Clinton most of all -- and will vote "for" the war, only later to say they were fooled.
Idiots.
And all the while, American addicts will get their fix of violence, pat themselves on the back for remaining the world's last best champions of freedom, and baby let it fucking burn! Burn. Burn. Burn, baby.
Gullible?
Who, me???? Not ME, surely.... I'm AMERICAN!
Just ask the American public after it offers its overwhelming support for an airstrike against Iran, which is imminent. Give it some months, perhaps into the summer or autumn.
The mainstream media, hardly "liberal", acting as an agent of propaganda for the Bush administration, will continue to abdicate its function, concede the facts, and "report" all the misinformation that's needed for the president and his thugs to get whatever they want. Karl Rove remains ever-aware of America's addiction to violence at a massive scale. Gullible Americans... oops, that's not a word now, is it?
Condolessa Rice, an Exxon oil tanker named for her, never shy to speak for the entire world, tells Iran: "The world will not stand by...." Rumsfeld discusses diplomacy, but utters "The military option is never off the table." Iran is referred to the U.N., Bolton will mock the process, saying the U.N. is impotent, and the president will then act on the "last resort" of a military strike, as diplomatic efforts will be "exhausted." Once done, appeals will be made to "support the troops" and personal attacks will be hurled at anyone who questions the administration's motives. Funding for the action will be filed as "emergency" and won't figure into the Pentagon's operating budget and the president will routinely bully the Congress for a blank check. With time, the episode will generate a self-propelling combustion and killing will continue simply because killing had begun.
We've seen it all. And we'll see it all again. (Just read "Rebuilding America's Defenses" for the entire blueprint/gameplan. It's all there, with neo-con authorship, a wish list of American global dominance enough to make any caring person choke.)
Democrats will be intimidated -- spineless idiots they are, Hillary Clinton most of all -- and will vote "for" the war, only later to say they were fooled.
Idiots.
And all the while, American addicts will get their fix of violence, pat themselves on the back for remaining the world's last best champions of freedom, and baby let it fucking burn! Burn. Burn. Burn, baby.
Gullible?
Who, me???? Not ME, surely.... I'm AMERICAN!
Saturday, February 04, 2006
conversation with an apologist...
note to reader: every american should be aware of a remarkable document called "rebuilding america's defenses" written in 2000 by a neo-conservative think tank called "project for the new american century." give it a google and you'll discover more than you'd ever want to know about the scheming and dreaming the neo-cons were doing during the clinton years. who participated in the think tank? go find out... you won't be surprised....
below is a portion of a continuing conversation i'm having with a friend of mine. he considers my hatred for the administration as "zealous" and questions me with things like "could you be wrong?" he's not as much of an apologist for the administration as i might be painting him out to be, but he scares me sometimes; propaganda is convincing by its very nature and definition.
of course i could be wrong... but i don't think i am. the bush administration has proven itself in five years to be downright cruel.
i offer the reading public what's below in an effort toward informed and truly patriotic discussion:
my good brother:
consider this from today's new york times: "Listening to President Bush's State of the Union address, one would be hard pressed to guess that one of America's greatest cities and the region around it had been laid to waste only five months earlier. This catastrophe barely merited a mention until the end of an otherwise lengthy speech."
sure, that doesn't mean he's evil, but it does mean he's negligent, insensitive, unaware, uncaring, and cruel. not evil... true.
i hesitate about the wording you're using to describe my position: no, i don't imagine these people in their offices asking each other "how can we be more cruel and evil today?" but i do imagine them asking themselves things that amount to the same outcome: "how can we avoid the law and avoid responsibility?" or "how can we give lip service to democratic values and avoid judicial oversight domestically?"
given the results of their many initiatives, how couldn't these questions have been asked privately? they employ complex, multi-part strategies to achieve their goals: none of this is by accident or unknowable consequence.
by "this" you know what i mean.
these are people who count farm-raised salmon among the overall number as a way to justify relaxing habitat protection in the wild. these folks are serious!
i'd like to return for a moment to one very important item that i mentioned on the phone yesterday: the definition of 9/11. was it an act of war that should be responded to with an act of war? was it a criminal act that should be responded to with an effort to apprehend the criminals and bring them to justice? what prerequisites are necessary for an act of war? once defined as a war, what increased and expanded powers are given to the president that would be missing if this were considered a criminal act? and could those increased advantages incentivize the president to define 9/11 in the way most advantageous to himself? yes 9/11 was huge, dramatic, stunning, effective, murderous... but was it an act of war waged by one nation upon another?
the direction i'm travelling with these questions should be clear. keeping in mind that the writers of "rebuilding america's defenses" are now in control of america, isn't it opportunistic that the administration could use the event to justify its desires articulated in the document? isn't it remarkable, for example, that the administration would house detainees in cuba and not anywhere in the united states? doesn't it say something that they'll avoid warrants, despite the second amendment to the consititution of the united states during this "time of war"? and isn't it telling that george bush referred to himself in a pre-election interview as "a war president", and not as "a president during a time of war"?
by calling the event "cause for war" instead of criminal act, the administration activated the global domination wish-list that is the document, a list that includes the total U.S. military control of earth's space and the complete elimination of any possibility of another global "super-power" mushrooming up anywhere on the planet, ever.
this is full, brimming with opportunities for them: since there is no government to wage war against, the administration has thrown the past methodologies to the dogs, allowing such creative, new, constitution-dodging definitions as "enemy combatant" and the ensuing results which "allow" them to incarcerate american citizens in military brigs and deny them their rights of habeus corpus. because there is no end to the war, absent all the usual components of a war, the administration can exploit the "war" all it wants, to energize americans' fears anytime it wishes... notice the absence of changes in the color-coded security levels after the election, this while there were many new color warnings in the weeks before the election. (i'll bet my bottom buck that we'll see a rise in the security level before the mid-term 2006 elections.)
i find it particularly cruel and telling that the administration would expoit the souls lost on 9/11 to initiate military action long-sought by the neo-cons. shockingly, writers of the document refer to the need of a "catalyst event", this written a full year before the towers fell.
there's simply too much smoke to dismiss the fire beneath. there's too much thorough planning and strategizing. the dissolution of constitutionally prescribed structures of goverment is real, deliberate, and happening to the advantage of the party and individuals in power, motivated by such ardor as witnessed in "rebuilding america's defenses."
yes, you're correct to identfy what's going on as "zealotry" but i don't consider myself as the zealot... they are!
note to reader: every american should be aware of a remarkable document called "rebuilding america's defenses" written in 2000 by a neo-conservative think tank called "project for the new american century." give it a google and you'll discover more than you'd ever want to know about the scheming and dreaming the neo-cons were doing during the clinton years. who participated in the think tank? go find out... you won't be surprised....
below is a portion of a continuing conversation i'm having with a friend of mine. he considers my hatred for the administration as "zealous" and questions me with things like "could you be wrong?" he's not as much of an apologist for the administration as i might be painting him out to be, but he scares me sometimes; propaganda is convincing by its very nature and definition.
of course i could be wrong... but i don't think i am. the bush administration has proven itself in five years to be downright cruel.
i offer the reading public what's below in an effort toward informed and truly patriotic discussion:
my good brother:
consider this from today's new york times: "Listening to President Bush's State of the Union address, one would be hard pressed to guess that one of America's greatest cities and the region around it had been laid to waste only five months earlier. This catastrophe barely merited a mention until the end of an otherwise lengthy speech."
sure, that doesn't mean he's evil, but it does mean he's negligent, insensitive, unaware, uncaring, and cruel. not evil... true.
i hesitate about the wording you're using to describe my position: no, i don't imagine these people in their offices asking each other "how can we be more cruel and evil today?" but i do imagine them asking themselves things that amount to the same outcome: "how can we avoid the law and avoid responsibility?" or "how can we give lip service to democratic values and avoid judicial oversight domestically?"
given the results of their many initiatives, how couldn't these questions have been asked privately? they employ complex, multi-part strategies to achieve their goals: none of this is by accident or unknowable consequence.
by "this" you know what i mean.
these are people who count farm-raised salmon among the overall number as a way to justify relaxing habitat protection in the wild. these folks are serious!
i'd like to return for a moment to one very important item that i mentioned on the phone yesterday: the definition of 9/11. was it an act of war that should be responded to with an act of war? was it a criminal act that should be responded to with an effort to apprehend the criminals and bring them to justice? what prerequisites are necessary for an act of war? once defined as a war, what increased and expanded powers are given to the president that would be missing if this were considered a criminal act? and could those increased advantages incentivize the president to define 9/11 in the way most advantageous to himself? yes 9/11 was huge, dramatic, stunning, effective, murderous... but was it an act of war waged by one nation upon another?
the direction i'm travelling with these questions should be clear. keeping in mind that the writers of "rebuilding america's defenses" are now in control of america, isn't it opportunistic that the administration could use the event to justify its desires articulated in the document? isn't it remarkable, for example, that the administration would house detainees in cuba and not anywhere in the united states? doesn't it say something that they'll avoid warrants, despite the second amendment to the consititution of the united states during this "time of war"? and isn't it telling that george bush referred to himself in a pre-election interview as "a war president", and not as "a president during a time of war"?
by calling the event "cause for war" instead of criminal act, the administration activated the global domination wish-list that is the document, a list that includes the total U.S. military control of earth's space and the complete elimination of any possibility of another global "super-power" mushrooming up anywhere on the planet, ever.
this is full, brimming with opportunities for them: since there is no government to wage war against, the administration has thrown the past methodologies to the dogs, allowing such creative, new, constitution-dodging definitions as "enemy combatant" and the ensuing results which "allow" them to incarcerate american citizens in military brigs and deny them their rights of habeus corpus. because there is no end to the war, absent all the usual components of a war, the administration can exploit the "war" all it wants, to energize americans' fears anytime it wishes... notice the absence of changes in the color-coded security levels after the election, this while there were many new color warnings in the weeks before the election. (i'll bet my bottom buck that we'll see a rise in the security level before the mid-term 2006 elections.)
i find it particularly cruel and telling that the administration would expoit the souls lost on 9/11 to initiate military action long-sought by the neo-cons. shockingly, writers of the document refer to the need of a "catalyst event", this written a full year before the towers fell.
there's simply too much smoke to dismiss the fire beneath. there's too much thorough planning and strategizing. the dissolution of constitutionally prescribed structures of goverment is real, deliberate, and happening to the advantage of the party and individuals in power, motivated by such ardor as witnessed in "rebuilding america's defenses."
yes, you're correct to identfy what's going on as "zealotry" but i don't consider myself as the zealot... they are!
What do Americans Want?
Watching clips of Dubya give the same 'ol same 'ol in the SOTU address earlier this week, I was wondering at what point in history when the office of the US President went from a real public servant to a characterture of leadership based on action movies.....do the majority of voters really want a cardboard cutout leader, someone who postures ("bring 'em on!"), is afraid of dissent? Did this all coincide with more and more of the public making decisions based on how we look on tv? More and more this is a short-term memory, sound-bite nation.....heck, even blogs serve that function as well......
Watching clips of Dubya give the same 'ol same 'ol in the SOTU address earlier this week, I was wondering at what point in history when the office of the US President went from a real public servant to a characterture of leadership based on action movies.....do the majority of voters really want a cardboard cutout leader, someone who postures ("bring 'em on!"), is afraid of dissent? Did this all coincide with more and more of the public making decisions based on how we look on tv? More and more this is a short-term memory, sound-bite nation.....heck, even blogs serve that function as well......
