Sunday, December 19, 2004
OK, so Time magazine is making George W. Bush, it's Person of the Year. Why? Because he stuck to his guns regardless of all the outcry for him to do otherwise.
Let's see. Being firm in your resolve, even if you're dead wrong, is a good thing. I guess Time magazine will then regard General George Custer as the greatest military general of all time, because he stuck by his guns even when he was dead wrong. Or how about this, Saddam Hussein should have been regarded highly because he stuck by his guns even when the masses of people in Iraq opposed his policies. Murdering and torturing your own people is ok because you stuck to your guns.
Bush has been bad on the economy, bungled the war in Iraq, has been flaccid in going after Osama bin Laden, bad for the environment, terrible on the deficit, and has curtailed civil rights, all in the first four years in office. But that's cool, because he stuck to his guns.
You know, there's more to leadership than sticking to your guns. If you're right then its good to stand by your convictions, but if you're dead wrong, and being stubborn about it, that's not good. In fact its bad leadership. Democracies are upheld by flexible leadership, not iron clad policies.
Way to go Time Magazine! Congratulations. You're working real hard to shed the "liberal media" label, but in turn you've lost your credibility as a legitimate news source. I now consider People Magazine to be a better source of information than your right wing rag. Megadittoes to you.
Let's see. Being firm in your resolve, even if you're dead wrong, is a good thing. I guess Time magazine will then regard General George Custer as the greatest military general of all time, because he stuck by his guns even when he was dead wrong. Or how about this, Saddam Hussein should have been regarded highly because he stuck by his guns even when the masses of people in Iraq opposed his policies. Murdering and torturing your own people is ok because you stuck to your guns.
Bush has been bad on the economy, bungled the war in Iraq, has been flaccid in going after Osama bin Laden, bad for the environment, terrible on the deficit, and has curtailed civil rights, all in the first four years in office. But that's cool, because he stuck to his guns.
You know, there's more to leadership than sticking to your guns. If you're right then its good to stand by your convictions, but if you're dead wrong, and being stubborn about it, that's not good. In fact its bad leadership. Democracies are upheld by flexible leadership, not iron clad policies.
Way to go Time Magazine! Congratulations. You're working real hard to shed the "liberal media" label, but in turn you've lost your credibility as a legitimate news source. I now consider People Magazine to be a better source of information than your right wing rag. Megadittoes to you.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Some quotes from a couple of our Founding Fathers to consider:
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
George Washington
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
George Washington
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington
The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
George Washington
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
Thomas Jefferson
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas Jefferson
---
DON'T MOURN! ORGANIZE!!!
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
George Washington
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
George Washington
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington
The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
George Washington
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
Thomas Jefferson
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas Jefferson
---
DON'T MOURN! ORGANIZE!!!
Sunday, December 05, 2004
from The Paranoid Style in American Politics
by Richard Hofstadter
Written in 1964...
The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
--------
Try this: Replace communists with liberals and/or Democrats. Replace Pearl Harbor with 9/11.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by liberals that American policy, at least since the days leading up to 9/11, has been dominated by Democrats who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of liberal elitists, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by communist/socialist agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of patriotic Americans.
It's an interesting article written in 1964, the birth point of the radical conservative agenda of the Republican Party engendered by Barry Goldwater. From there it goes to Reagan/Bush and the whole crop of radical Republicans we have running the show today.
The whole radical right-wing agenda feeds off of paranoia, ignorance, and fear.
I've been reading about fascism and its roots in history. These radical right wing groups in the GOP are planting the seeds of fascism. Consider their anti-intellectualism, their pandering to an extremist religious world view, hatred of liberals and liberalism, their love of the military, their blind patriotism, their loyalty to George Bush.
I'd recommend reading the articles on this website. It's a great introduction to fascism. Its helped me clarify what fascism is, and what its not. I'm glad to say we don't live in a fascist state, but we do live in a proto-fascist state.
Take the complete docility of our media in regard to the events of our presidential election, the complete ignorance of Bush's mishandling of American domestic and foreign policy, the lack of investigation into voter fraud are just signs that the press now works to be a mouthpiece for the state. Not one of the major media outlets even bothered to investigate how Bush won, save to say that voters were more concerned about "moral" issues over domestic ones and the war on terrorism.
I don't buy it. People don't wait in line for hours just to re-elect the status quo. People don't stand in the rain just to re-elect the status quo.
Evidence of vote tampering and voter fraud is starting to pop up. Mostly related to those Diebold machines. The Florida and Ohio legistlatures dominate the vote recount efforts in those states. They're very reluctant to do a recount, and will delay as long as possible.
I don't want to sound conspiracy theorist, but something just doesn't feel right about how Bush won the election, and the media quickly turned its attention away to other less important things. (Princess Diana has a new tape, and Michael Jackson allegedly molested another child, and Scot Peterson was found guilty. You get the point, right?)
I'll betting what will happen is there will be tons of research on the internet, some low level respectable investigative journalists and foreign journalists will find blatant fraud. Then the New York Times, in 2007, will publish an article about the blatant voter fraud. Then the mainstream media will briefly cover it, but 2008 will roll around and they'll focus on the presidential primaries and Madonna's new baby.
We're witnessing the birth of fascist America if we don't get active and organize, and stop these right wing f**kers!!!
---------------------
Incidentally, the hunt for Osama bin Laden went cold again. First Bush claims we'll get Bin laden "dead or alive." (2001) Then he says, "I just don't think about him that much. He doesn't matter." (2002) Then he reclaims, "I know that bin Laden attacked us." (2004) In the debates he claimed the hunt for bin Laden was as vigorous as ever. Nope.
Let's step back in time. (I know, Americans love their history as much as eating broccoli (both are good for you), but lets recap.)
September 11, 2001: 19 radical Islamic Jihadists hijack four American commercial jets. 15 of those hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the rest from Egypt. They were working for the radical terrorist group, Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is/was the ringleader of Al Qaeda.
These planes destroy the World Trade center, killing thousands of Americans. One plane crashes into the Pentagon. The fourth, crashes in Pennsylvania.
A couple days later, Bush proclaims the US will get Osama "dead or alive." The US and allied invasion of Afghanistan commences. The Taliban is quickly ousted, and Osama and his cronies are on the run. America is united behind Bush's war effort.
November 2001: Osama bin Laden is cornered by US and allied forces in the moutain region of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Bush decides to take forces from there to prepare for a war with Iraq. Bin Laden goes free. The American forces are reduced. Afghan warlords are used as mercenaries to hunt Bin Laden, and Pakistan is left holding the bag to hunt Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
September 2002 - March 2003: Bush, Rice, Powell, and Rumsfeld begin the media blitz to prepare Americans for war with Iraq. Fear mongering based on "weapons of mass destruction" combined with assertions that Saddam and Bin Laden are allies waging a vast war against the United States emerge. Americans are divided about the strange and radical turn of the war on terrorism.
December 2004: No weapons of mass destruction have been found. No connection between Saddam/Iraq, or Al Qaeda/Bin Laden exist. $148 billion dollars, 1270 dead American soldiers and 9556 American soldiers wounded. Bin Laden is still free, and Iraq is not a democracy. Americans are still divided, to the point of being uncivil. Not terribly violent, yet.
My prediction for Iraq's near future: The elections that will be held in January will be a farce at best. Allawi will be the handpicked puppet, er, new leader of Iraq. The Iraqis won't see him as the legitimate leader, the US will back him as so, and the war will rage on. Bush will state that Iraq is now a free and sovereign nation, and the elections were fair. Eventually Iraq will devolve into civil war, or it will be a repressive police state, friendly to the US and anti-OPEC.
Bin Laden will still run free. He's gotta love Bush as president. Al Qaeda will have record numbers of recruits. Americans will still be divided.
I can only speculate from here. I want to be optimistic, but I'm not. The only thing that might spark a little hope, would be the Democrats taking back both houses in 2006. (I doubt they will.) By 2008, the Democrats will be a distant second political party. I'd love to be proven wrong. There's something sinister going on in America, and its not coming from liberals or Democrats.
by Richard Hofstadter
Written in 1964...
The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
--------
Try this: Replace communists with liberals and/or Democrats. Replace Pearl Harbor with 9/11.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by liberals that American policy, at least since the days leading up to 9/11, has been dominated by Democrats who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of liberal elitists, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by communist/socialist agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of patriotic Americans.
It's an interesting article written in 1964, the birth point of the radical conservative agenda of the Republican Party engendered by Barry Goldwater. From there it goes to Reagan/Bush and the whole crop of radical Republicans we have running the show today.
The whole radical right-wing agenda feeds off of paranoia, ignorance, and fear.
I've been reading about fascism and its roots in history. These radical right wing groups in the GOP are planting the seeds of fascism. Consider their anti-intellectualism, their pandering to an extremist religious world view, hatred of liberals and liberalism, their love of the military, their blind patriotism, their loyalty to George Bush.
I'd recommend reading the articles on this website. It's a great introduction to fascism. Its helped me clarify what fascism is, and what its not. I'm glad to say we don't live in a fascist state, but we do live in a proto-fascist state.
Take the complete docility of our media in regard to the events of our presidential election, the complete ignorance of Bush's mishandling of American domestic and foreign policy, the lack of investigation into voter fraud are just signs that the press now works to be a mouthpiece for the state. Not one of the major media outlets even bothered to investigate how Bush won, save to say that voters were more concerned about "moral" issues over domestic ones and the war on terrorism.
I don't buy it. People don't wait in line for hours just to re-elect the status quo. People don't stand in the rain just to re-elect the status quo.
Evidence of vote tampering and voter fraud is starting to pop up. Mostly related to those Diebold machines. The Florida and Ohio legistlatures dominate the vote recount efforts in those states. They're very reluctant to do a recount, and will delay as long as possible.
I don't want to sound conspiracy theorist, but something just doesn't feel right about how Bush won the election, and the media quickly turned its attention away to other less important things. (Princess Diana has a new tape, and Michael Jackson allegedly molested another child, and Scot Peterson was found guilty. You get the point, right?)
I'll betting what will happen is there will be tons of research on the internet, some low level respectable investigative journalists and foreign journalists will find blatant fraud. Then the New York Times, in 2007, will publish an article about the blatant voter fraud. Then the mainstream media will briefly cover it, but 2008 will roll around and they'll focus on the presidential primaries and Madonna's new baby.
We're witnessing the birth of fascist America if we don't get active and organize, and stop these right wing f**kers!!!
---------------------
Incidentally, the hunt for Osama bin Laden went cold again. First Bush claims we'll get Bin laden "dead or alive." (2001) Then he says, "I just don't think about him that much. He doesn't matter." (2002) Then he reclaims, "I know that bin Laden attacked us." (2004) In the debates he claimed the hunt for bin Laden was as vigorous as ever. Nope.
Let's step back in time. (I know, Americans love their history as much as eating broccoli (both are good for you), but lets recap.)
September 11, 2001: 19 radical Islamic Jihadists hijack four American commercial jets. 15 of those hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the rest from Egypt. They were working for the radical terrorist group, Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is/was the ringleader of Al Qaeda.
These planes destroy the World Trade center, killing thousands of Americans. One plane crashes into the Pentagon. The fourth, crashes in Pennsylvania.
A couple days later, Bush proclaims the US will get Osama "dead or alive." The US and allied invasion of Afghanistan commences. The Taliban is quickly ousted, and Osama and his cronies are on the run. America is united behind Bush's war effort.
November 2001: Osama bin Laden is cornered by US and allied forces in the moutain region of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Bush decides to take forces from there to prepare for a war with Iraq. Bin Laden goes free. The American forces are reduced. Afghan warlords are used as mercenaries to hunt Bin Laden, and Pakistan is left holding the bag to hunt Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
September 2002 - March 2003: Bush, Rice, Powell, and Rumsfeld begin the media blitz to prepare Americans for war with Iraq. Fear mongering based on "weapons of mass destruction" combined with assertions that Saddam and Bin Laden are allies waging a vast war against the United States emerge. Americans are divided about the strange and radical turn of the war on terrorism.
December 2004: No weapons of mass destruction have been found. No connection between Saddam/Iraq, or Al Qaeda/Bin Laden exist. $148 billion dollars, 1270 dead American soldiers and 9556 American soldiers wounded. Bin Laden is still free, and Iraq is not a democracy. Americans are still divided, to the point of being uncivil. Not terribly violent, yet.
My prediction for Iraq's near future: The elections that will be held in January will be a farce at best. Allawi will be the handpicked puppet, er, new leader of Iraq. The Iraqis won't see him as the legitimate leader, the US will back him as so, and the war will rage on. Bush will state that Iraq is now a free and sovereign nation, and the elections were fair. Eventually Iraq will devolve into civil war, or it will be a repressive police state, friendly to the US and anti-OPEC.
Bin Laden will still run free. He's gotta love Bush as president. Al Qaeda will have record numbers of recruits. Americans will still be divided.
I can only speculate from here. I want to be optimistic, but I'm not. The only thing that might spark a little hope, would be the Democrats taking back both houses in 2006. (I doubt they will.) By 2008, the Democrats will be a distant second political party. I'd love to be proven wrong. There's something sinister going on in America, and its not coming from liberals or Democrats.
