Nero fiddled, for Obama that would be an improvement.

Associated Press has a report out on the disastrous Bush/Obama deficit. I find the way it is worded a bit deceptive myself. I want to discuss how words are chosen to give people particular impressions that may, or may not, be accurate.

The headline is: “Meltdown 101: How did $1 Trillion deficit happen?”

This is a rather passive phrase. Deficits don’t just “happen” they are caused. Accidents happen; assaults are planned. To say something happened implies a lack of human causation. Tidal waves, earthquakes, and tornados happen. Budget deficits are planned and imposed. At the very least words that indicate active causation ought to have been used.

The report says that the projected deficit by the Obama White House is $1.84 trillion, which is “four times the size of last year’s deficit.” It is noted that the previous deficit “was the all-time leader at the time, at $454.8 billion—a figure that now seems puny in comparison.” Consider that the size of deficit has ballooned by 400% in just one year. The debt that the government now holds, and which it intends to hold you responsible for, amounts to $184,000 per person. For the typical family this more than pays off a home.

The cost of government is not just the lose of freedom through the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on obscenity, the war on poverty and the real wars. It is not just the burden of Obama’s auto czar, drug czar, health czar, energy czar, border czar, bailout czar, urban czar, regulatory czar (aren’t they all?), Middle East czar, and a couple of dozen others. (Remember when czar was a term for despot? It still is.) The cost of government is also the taxes that destroy jobs, create poverty, and strip people of the ability to pay for health care. And it is another $184,000 in debts that the Demopublican authoritarians have imposed on each and every American.

The AP story asks how America went from budget surpluses to deficits. It’s answer is again very passive—no causation, no human agents doing anything. “The surpluses at the end of the last decade reflected a boom-time economy, which was enjoying the longest uninterrupted expansion in U.S. history.

When the last recession began in 2001, that cut into revenues. Then the government's budget picture darkened even further after the 2001 terrorist attacks as government spending was increased to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Things happened, see. No one increased budgets. No one spent more. Bush and Obama didn’t rush out and decimate the economy with unfunded, onerous spending. Bad things happened, no one is to blame.

The article says: ” Two things happened to make the deficit balloon: The country was hit by a severe recession that began in December 2007, and then those troubles were compounded by the worst financial crisis in seven decades, which struck in the fall of 2008.”

The article keeps alive the lie that government spending is “stimulus” that will solve the problem. Bush spent the savings of your unborn grandchildren. Obama spent the savings of their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren.

The only spending this article talks about is “stimulus spending” and “automatic stabilizers” such as “food stamps and unemployment compensation.” It doesn’t mention bad programs like ethanol, farm subsidies, foreign aid, and billions of raw pork, spent by dishonest politicians in both parties. That sort of spending apparently does not exist, or is not acknowledged.

The article also claims: “Economists say it is OK to run massive deficits now to stablize the banking system and get the economy growing again.” Notice that the way this is worded is as if there is unanimous consent by economists that deficit spending does these things. There is good evidence that deficits don’t stabilize but distort and that they prevent economic growth. Thousands of economists have spoken out against the disastrous spending of the Bush/Obama regimes. Associated Press doesn’t think they exist.

And remember that Obama isn’t finished. What he is seeking is state control over as much of the economy as possible. That which the State doesn’t control directly (socialism), it will control through regulations (fascism). Obama is an economic totalitarian.

And what sort of solution does Associated Press offer in this “analysis” of the problem. According to them, private economists believe we need some type of tax increases to convince foreign investors that the administration is serious about getting its deficits under control.”

How do you get deficits under control? Do you pick your neighbor’s pockets? Or do you cut spending? Obama doesn’t want to get the deficit under control by spending less. He has only two alternatives. One is to tax you directly and steal even more of your income. That means you consume less, jobs are destroyed and the economy shrinks even further. Or, he can spend wildly and monetize the debt through inflation. In that system he steals your income indirectly by reducing the value of the currency. Either way the Obama plan is to screw you over economically. You will have to cut your spending while Obama expands his. You will have to make do with less so he can have more.

As I see it the deficit of Bush was very bad. The deficit of Obama is four times worse. Bush was the worst president in American history, by my standards. Obama is set to be four times worse. Barack Obama is worse for America than the 9/11 terrorists. What those terrorists did was awful and killed thousands. What Obama is doing is wrecking the entire economy and inflicting misery on hundreds of millions of people. It is rather disgusting.

His one virtue was supposed to be his stand on civil liberties. Pass the air sickness bag on that one too. After raping you economically he’s still pumping up the police state of Homeland Security, he is still working to restrict first amendment rights, he is still imposing bigoted policies against gay people and he is still conducting the disastrous war on drugs. Obama is as bad on civil liberties, to date, as George Bush and he’s worse for the economy—as hard as that is to believe. It is claimed that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. One can't say the same for Obama. In his case fiddling would be an improvement. He's thrown gasoline on the flames.

Conservative loud-mouth admits torture

Conservative talk-show host, Erich "Mancow Muller has long defended the practice of waterboarding claiming that it is not torture. He finally subjected himself to the practice. See the results below:




Christopher Hitchens tried the same thing. I personally like Hitchens. When we met last year he was personable and I appreciate the inscribe copy of his book, God is Not Great. But Hitchens bought into the war and as such felt obliged to defend the Bush administration from charges of torture. Hitchens changed his mind after he endured it. After experiencing it himself Hitchens wrote, "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

Below is a video of Hitchens discussing the experience along with footage of him experiencing the waterboarding. The Bush leadership truly does deserve to be put on trial for war crimes.



David Beito, at Liberty & Power, wrote:

Apparently, this is the only way to convince pro-war conservatives, or their fellow travelers, that waterboarding is torture. Another strategy is to recommend that advocates of torture devote an hour this week to reading what Lord Acton said about power instead of watching the next episode of "24."

Paul Krugman is seriously demented.

Paul Krugman is demented, and I mean that in the kindest way possible. The only explanation I have for some of his absurd and ridiculous views are that the man is inflicted by some serious brain disease that is rotting out the cells one by one.

Krugman is one of these people who is spreading the bullshit that George Bush is some sort of small government advocate and the failure of the Bush administration is that it didn’t intervene enough. As Krugman writes in the New York Times: “What we really need is a government that works, because it’s run by people who understand that sometimes government is the solution, after all.”

Apparently Bush didn’t think government “is the solution, after all.”

To believe that you have close your eyes to the inflated budgets that Bush has pushed through. This would remain true even if we removed Bush’s big government war policy -- and war is big government at its biggest, something conservatives can’t comprehend. Bush has extended government into more and more fields throughout his term. He has limited individual rights, ripped up Constitutional protections, and expanded the powers of the state.

What was No Child Left Behind but the nationalization of schools? Who was it pushed through that massive increase in socialized medicine? Bush loves big government across the board. His motto has been: when people hurt government has to move.

Krugman’s bitch is about the Katrina disaster and government not getting involved enough.

I followed that story in great detail at the time and I constantly saw government moving in and taking over. Let’s start with the obvious issue of the levees that failed. These were government built and government maintained. And the issue of the levees was widely known and known for years. Big government lovers like Bill Clinton had an opportunity to shore up the levees. Government reports have existed for a very long time noting that one really big hurricane hitting New Orleans could breach the levees and flood the city.

What we had was government failure not government non-interference. We have government intervention and it failed. It made things worse.

Consider the way the federal government rushed in and stopped all private efforts to help people. It wanted to monopolize the “rescue” even while it wasn’t rescuing anyone. Over and over all the government managed to do was prevent private efforts to help people.

But this is no surprise. Government aid is slow and cumbersome. Private aid is swift and easy. It has been repeatedly shown that when famine hits some region of Africa that food aid takes so long to arrive that the famine has often ended by the time the food arrives. When the free food does arrive it manages to bankrupt the local farmers, putting them out business, making future famines more likely.

People in New Orleans who had food and water and were able to protect themselves were rounded by the feds. Instead of helping people platoons of armed government agents went door to door disarming law abiding citizens. Physicians who sought to fly to the scene to help deliver needed care were stopped by federal agents. Over and over the federal government acted. And its first action was to always monopolize the charity by excluding private aid and preventing people from helping one another.

Bush and Krugman are soul brothers. They share the same love for overreaching, intrusive, regulatory, confiscatory government.

The "leader" of the free world - God Save Us All.

Am I the only one or is he looking more and more like Homer Simpson every day -- without the intellect of course.

Bush Administration sells out the Second Amendment.

The big government policies of the Bush administration have once again shown their face. Lots of conservatives don't mind that Bush has shredded the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment, etc. But they have comforted their little pea brains with the idea that King George and his lackeys were good on the Second Amendment. They don't mind spying on people, warrantless searches, suspension of writ of habeas corpus but they start to have fits over the thought that their guns might be touched. Unlike the Left, or the Right, I happen to support all ten amendments of the Bill of Rights, including the "Forgotten Ninth" and the Tenth.

For the first time, in a very long time, the Supreme Court will be hearing a case, DC vs Heller, regarding the outright ban on owning handguns in the Disctrict of Columbia. I've been collecting the amicus briefs that have been filed with the Supreme Court on the case. And the pro-rights side have filed some good material. In addition the Congress on Racial Equality and the gay group, Pink Pistols, have filed briefs defending the rights of gun owners (gee, I'd love to see the day when conservative gun owners file briefs in court in defense of the rights of racial minorities and gays). Some of the usual suspects on the Left have filed briefs defending the gun ban And now Bush's Department of Justice steps in and basically sabotages the rights of gun owners.

Libertarian attorney Robert Levy, who is involved with the case has written about how the Bush Administration is working to undermine the pro-rights position in this case. The Bush people are basically trying to get the Court to send the case back to the lower courts. Levy writes:

Rather than a foursquare pronouncement that the D.C. handgun ban is unreasonable by any standard, the Justice Department has essentially endorsed years of depositions and expert testimony, and a rerun before a less hospitable Supreme Court.

In effect, a conservative administration has thrown a lifeline to gun controllers. Following the DOJ blueprint, they can pay lip service to an individual right while simultaneously stripping it of any real meaning. After all, if the D.C. ban can survive judicial scrutiny, it is difficult to imagine a regulation that would not.

Levy concludes:

Supporters of the Constitution can only hope that the Supreme Court will embrace an individual-rights view of the Second Amendment while rejecting the notion that legislatures can treat the amendment as if it did not exist. Regrettably, the Bush administration — supposed proponent of gun rights and devotee of the Constitution — has added one more breach of promise to its growing list.

As I see it this gives Bush a perfect record. He's ten for ten when it comes to vandalzing the Bill of Rights. My one disappointment with the upcoming election is that it is likely to take place without Mr. Bush facing a trial for treason to the Constitution. And in the case of the Moron in Chief I could be easily persuaded to reconsider the death penalty -- at least that would give his body a chance to catch up with his brain.

And then there was one.

Australia’s John Howard, who as prime minister was a staunch supporter of George Bush, has been sent packing by the electorate. Not long ago Tony Blair, another Bush lapdog was sent packing by his own party. Both men were harmed because of their close association with the Great Divider.

George Bush clearly has the Merde Touch. That’s like the Midas Touch except everything he touches turns to shit. For decades evangelical Christianity was on the rise in the United States. Two terms of a president wedded to fundamentalistic thinking apparently has turned the tide. Evangelicalism is scrambling to hold its young, more and more young people now openly embrace atheism, and evangelicals are rethinking their connections to the Republican Party.

Even Republicans are staying away from their own leader. Not one of the major Republican presidential lot, a sad and pathetic selection if I ever saw one, are getting cozy with Dubya. No one is defending the man. More and more people see his handling of Katrina as the high point of career with it being downhill from there on every other issue.

The solid national Republican majority that Ronald Reagan created has been shattered into tiny pieces. The American voters bitch-slapped Bush hard in the last election. The Republicans lost the Senate. The Republicans lost the House. The Republicans lost state assemblies around the country. The Republicans, who had a sold majority of the gubernatorial seats traded places with the minority Democrats. Bush has been such an utter disaster that even Hillary Clinton is looking good.

If Bush were a horse he’d be glue by now.

Foreign interventionism creates the imperial presidency.

One of the great underrated figures in the history of modern classical liberalism has been Felix Morley. A well known journalist, he edited the Washington Post having previously been on the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun where he worked with that other great libertarian, H.L. Mencken. Morley eventually became president of Haverford College, a Quaker college that was the alma mater of himself and his brother, literary figure Christopher Morley, and his other brother, Frank a mathematician. In addition to his work as a college president Morley was one of the founders of Human Events.

Morley differed with the other founders of that journal, Frank Hanighen and Henry Regnery. As Morley saw it the other two “moved on to associate with the far Right of the Republican Party” while Morley “remained essentially ‘Libertarian,’ though it is with great reluctance that I yield the old terminology of ‘liberal’ to the socialists.” Morley’s position was that he opposed “centralization of political power” as deadly to the American Republic.

The conservative movement is inherently a backward looking movement, clinging to the past simply because it is the past. The oppose liberalism when it arose, preferring the feudal system of centralize power. When reactionary socialism arose and took control of Russia and China the conservatives again clung to the past though the past they now clung to was happily the liberal past which conservatives of previous days had unsuccessfully tried to stop.

During the days of Morley there was a commonality between the classical liberal and the conservative which did not exist before, or since. Conservatives today are now clinging to the past of the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt -- they cling to foreign interventionism, empire building, large, invasive government, and, their own special mixture of theocratic beliefs.

Morley understood something that conservatives of his day simply could not grasp. Foreign interventionism abroad requires the centralization of power at home. More particularly it requires the centralization of power in the presidency.

The imperial presidency of George Bush is the logical outgrowth of foreign interventionism. And, I might add, foreign interventionism is the policy of the imperialist Left. It was the “progressives” on the Left who pushed for empire building both in England and in the United States. An uncomfortable truth for today’s Left is that their ideology created the foreign policy that Bush pursues and that policy is directly linked to the imperial presidency he has established.

Morley warned Americans that you can’t “make a federal republic do an imperial job” because “our traditional institutions are specifically designed to prevent centralization of power.” Yet an empire needs centralized decision making. Interventionism around the world needs a president who can respond without the shackles of public debate. A “government subject to public opinion” can not “run an Empire.”

Half a century ago Morley warned: “World leadership requires centralization of power in the the capital of the nation that seeks dominance” and such government must “be completely indifferent to the gusts of public opinion.” Not only must power be centralized in the capital but in the executive branch. “If we are going to remake the world in our image it is most irritating to have some hick Congressman raising questions about the costs involved, yet the theory of our government is that the gentleman from Podunk actually has that right.”

Congressmen from Podunk can’t manage an empire. One reason the congress has abandoned its constitutional duty to declare war is that an interventionist foreign policy must react to emergencies and emergencies are not easily debated in advance. One can’t weigh the alternatives and argue for different solutions. If the house in on fire you grab the hose and spray and worry about what gets wet later. Consider that Constitutional travesty that George Bush foisted on the American people called the Patriot Act. What debate did it have? What consideration was given to the powers it created in violation of the Bill of Rights? Congress rubber stamped it without a single member of that body having actually read the document.

The executive branch of government argues that there is information too sensitive to be made public. You can’t debate whether or not the United States should engage in secret subsidies to various political organizations overseas -- it’s secret! You can’t discuss how agents of the American government are involved in toppling governments, installing new regimes, creating new enemies for his to worry about in the future. It must be done surreptitiously.

Not even Congress can be trusted with the information necessary to engage in remaking the world. And certainly the American people can never be given such information. Debating such things only tips off the “enemy” and with an interventionist foreign policy there are endless enemies.

Foreign interventionism requires not just big government with power centralized in the presidency but it requires evasive, secret government. It requires a president who will lie to the public and the media about what is going on -- for the good of the country.

The Democrats may whine about the Imperial presidency and the dishonesty of the Bush administration. But these are the logical results of decades of bipartisan support for an aggressive policy of interventionism. This is the policy of Wilson and Roosevelt that the Democrats were so enthusiastic about.

The Progressive movement in America championed the “white man’s burden” of ruling over an Empire. The famed progressive Herbert Croly said America needed “the tonic of a serious moral adventure” by which he meant war. He proposed a military building up acknowledging that it “will be used chiefly for positive and for aggressive as opposed to merely defensive purposes.” But such posturing was necessary to make the American people accept the centralized control of life that the Progressive felt lead to utopia. Croly argued that the “promise of American life is to be fulfilled ...by a certain measure of discipline” and “by a larger measure of individual subordination and self-denial.”

The progressives were champions of centralized control and war was the fastest road to centralization that they could conceive of. But power is not naturally democratic, though many on the Left seem unable to understand this, it is inherently autocratic. Accumulating power in Washington many be the wet dream of the socialist but as power is transferred to the central government they are failing to notice that it is accumulating even faster in the presidency.

If the Left wishes to avoid future administrations dominated by the likes of Bush & Cheney it must push to redistribute power in the opposite direction. Both the presidency and the Congress must redistribute power back to the public by surrendering powers they have been exercising for far too long. America must also return to its Constitutional foreign policy which is one of non-interventionism. The ultimate reality is that an Empire needs an Emperor. If one wishes to avoid the later one must reject the former.

Bush policies sap billions from economy.

The Bush police state marches on imposing billions in additional costs on people. The New York Times today mentioned that US citizens are now waiting hours at border posts before they can return home. People are missing important appointments and businesses along the border are suffering.

Thousand and thousands of American live over the border but work in the United States. They are facing delays of two hours or more when they drive into the United States and this is while the border thugs are merely implementing new policies periodically. When they are fully in place the delays will be longer.

You may remember that the Homeland Security brownshirts pushed through new controls on Americans requiring everyone to have a passport to reenter the US even if they had only been in Toronto for s short visit. (In some places in the US crossing the border may mean visiting the neighbor across the street.)

In addition the border agents are now routinely using the photo ID that you must present to call in your name and have the government run checks on you before you are allowed to go home.

The New York Times reports that the new border polices are “discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local business.”

The paper notes that 234 million crossings into the United States take place every year. Of course many U.S. citizens who live near the border make multiple entries so this is not 234 million visitors. If the wait time averages only one hour that is 234 million hours wasted. Even at minimum wage rates the cost in wait time alone is over a billion dollars at the Mexican border alone. And the government is spending another $3 billion to cause the screw ups.

Reichmarshal W. Ralph Basham, head of “Customs and Border Protection” dismisses the impositions on millions of people claiming, “A safer border is well worth the wait.” Of course he’s not the one waiting and neither is there one shred of evidence that all the controls and costs have increased security. Please remember that all the 9/11 terrorists were given permits to vist the U.S. and that none came in by land but by air. None were U.S. citizens, who are the actual targets of these new controls.

Reichmarshal Basham is not paying the cost for waiting. He’d get a wave through if he ever had to cross by land. And he is a net beneficiary. He is paid to impose controls on others. So not only is he not paying the costs he is profiting because of them.

One American citizen, Wilda Laboy has a job in Mexico, lives in the United States and is studying in the States. She says that she is now routinely late for classes because it can take up to three hours to get home. About $332 billion in trade takes place with Mexico and most of it is moved by truck. In El Paso 21,000 people per day walk across the border for shopping.

If Americans think they are having a hard time the United States travel Nazis are making impossible for tourists and others to visit the United States. Numerous surveys show that tourists, world-wide, say the United States travel thugs treat visitors worse than any other country. One result is that millions of people are avoiding the United States entirely costing billions more in lost income. And some airlines now avoid US airports for stop-overs because all passengers on board must be fingerprinted and pass through passport control, even if the flight is just refueling. Vancouver has attracted flights that used to fly through Los Angeles. I have no idea how much that is costing the economy.

And the Washington Post had a story yesterday about how the Bush control are harming arts and culture. One of the oldest symphony orchestras in England, celebrating their 150th anniversary, was invited to play at Lincoln Center. But to get their visas they were told that every single member of the orchestra was required to travel to London, from their home in Manchester, to be personally interviewed. They also had to fingerprinted like common criminals and have facial-recognition scans taken (it will be a matter of time before the government forces this on U.S. citizens but I predict it will happen.)

The orchestra started looking at the cost to get every member to London, they would have to be put in hotel and they had to pay for visas and interviews and hassles that the travel Nazis are imposing. The additional costs for these people were $80,000 and the orchestra decided that they didn’t want to come to America anymore. Just consider how much income was lost to the U.S. because of that.

It’s a large orchestra. Photos I saw seem to indicate close to 100 members. Cheap airfare would be around $550. Hotel costs would run at least $100 per night per person. Food costs, on a budget would $25 to $50 per person per day. Of course they’d buy other things as well. And an orchestra usually fly around the world for more than just one day. And there is the lost revenue to the Lincoln Center because of concerts where no tickets can be sold.

The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage holds a major Folklife Festival every year with performers from around the world. To bring in performers from Bhutan they had to fly them India for interviews in order to obtain visas. Didier Le Besque, agent for Ballet Biarritz said that it cost $48,000 in costs just to get the ballet troupe to the U.S. Embassy in Paris for interviews.

The Post article mentioned that due to these restrictions one $250,000 tour by the Peking Opera of Jilin was cancelled due to the fact the U.S. wouldn’t give visas to the Opera members -- right, bin Laden has trained Operatic terrorists who hit a high note and blow up Washington. It can takes months for visa applications to be processed but wonderful bureaucrats offer an expedited service for visiting artists. And the extra cost is only $1,000 per person.

It can take so long to process the paperwork that a group of business that deal in the performing arts pushed for an allowance that the artist can file for a visa one full year in advance. The normal six month advance permit didn’t give them enough time to get approval and still book their tours. And each time a performing artist wishes to visit the U.S. he must travel to a U.S. embassy, get fingerprinted and have photos taken even if he has already been fingerprinted and interviewed several times. This requirement must be repeated every single time.

The paper says that the $1,000 expedition fee is basically mandatory or the U.S. embassy is unlikely to process the applications in time for performances. The band New Model Army has applied in the past and received their visas in plenty of time for three previous tours so they declined the offer of paying the extra $1,000 for each visa. This year their applications took months to process and when they queried about the delays they were told that it was not possible to trace the applications unless the $1,000 had been paid. The band missed their tour. Their visas were turned down on a technicality that could have been cleared up easily had they been told about it in time. But with the U.S. embassies take months and months to approve one visa application they didn’t find out in time. How many hundreds of thousands, or millions, was lost due to one tour being canceled?

The Post says that there are 7,000 individuals who do the bookings for performing artists. Before the Bush administration 5,250 of them worked with international artists. As the United States becomes more and more aggressive against visitors agents have stopped even trying to bring the performers in. Of those who previously brought in artist one in five have already stopped doing it.

China’s Golden Dragon Acrobats have been performing in the United State for thirty years. But their tour this year is now on hold since the U.S. is refusing to grant them visas even though there have no incidents with the performers in the past. Various music groups have cancelled performing in the United States as a result of these hassles.

I used to routinely purchase and export books from the United States to other countries. After Bush got his ideas to clamp down on freedom one supplier after another just stopped selling to anyone outside the United States. They said that the extra paperwork and regulations they had to go through just to mail one box of books was no longer worth it and the quiet selling to anyone outside the United States. I have no idea how many such distributors have decided to just close down sales to foreign countries as a result. But Bush doesn’t care -- he’s on a crusade against “evil doers” and “terrrists”

Here’s the sickening thing about all this. Bin Laden and the Taliban drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Their strategy was a simple one. They said that one attack in one area would force the Soviets to spend millions of dollars in response. The terrorists can’t defeat militarily and they know it. But for a relative few dollars they can impose millions of dollars in damage -- not direct but indirectly. Bin Laden openly said that any attack on the U.S., even if it had failed would push panic stricken politicians to impose billions and billions in costs on the economy.

Over time the economic damages of these measures add up. It is safe to say that the economic damage directly caused by 9/11 is now insignificant to the economic damage caused by Bush in his panicky response to a problem that he clearly doesn’t understand. His response has already lead to the deaths of more Americans than the attack did. And now he helping bin Laden reach his goal of inflicting massive harm on the American economy by a Stalinist-like crack down that continues to escalate with no regard for the liberties lost or the billions wasted. Bin Laden is clearly smarter than Bush, but then so my sock, and he knows that Bush is the one who can harm America. When the moron in the White House said that our enemies “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we” it may have been the one truthful statement Bush has made in his entire eight years. If you are one of the Bushites who don’t think he said that play the video for yourself. The best you can say it that it’s a Freudian slip, the unintentional revelation of something that is true.

Democrats: what the hell is your party doing? Why are they letting Bush continue with his disasters? And if you guys are so against this war why is foreign policy neoconservative leading the Democratic pack of candidates?

Cheney's Law: Worth watching.

The hallmark of the Bush years has been the creation of an Imperial Presidency, one unlimited by Constitutional restraints, empowered to do what he damn well pleased to do. The documentary Cheney's Law shows that Vice President Chency walked into the White House a believer in expanded presidential powers, far beyond those listed by the Constitution. Every power granted was interpreted as widely as possible. And the Moron in Chief was told he could do whatever he wanted under his powers as commander in chief -- it was basically the creation of a war-time dictator without the inconvenience of even having a declaration of war.

What we have seen is a rerun of the Reichstag fire. In that incident a semi-deranged Dutch Communist broke into the German Reichstag and set it ablaze. (For the definitive story of this incident read The Reichstag Fire by Fritz Tobias.) The fire caught the Nazis unaware, in spite of Communist claims to the contrary. But Hitler was ever one to use unexpected opportunities to grab what he wanted. Using the fire as the excuse he pushed through parliament the Enabling Act which gave the government the power to legislate without parliamentary approval. It was his version of the misnamed and treasonous Patriot Act.

The sad reality is that Hitler was more willing to respect the form of the rule of law (though not the spirit) than the Cheney-Bush White House. His Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag. The powers claimed by the White House under Cheney's doctrines were seized without such approval. A key claim made by these advocates of Imperial Presidential power is that Bush may take these powers even if the Congress or the Supreme Court oppose them. Hence, Bush has basically said he has the right to ignore the Constitution -- an idea that would strike the Founding Fathers as not only absurd but treasonous. Under Hitler two-third of the Reichstag supported the Enabling Act. Under Bush the U.S. Congress passes laws and Bush signs statements indicating which sections he intends to ignore.

Hitler claimed there was a crisis and asked the Reichstag for the powers to deal with it -- powers which he never willingly surrendered. The Cheney presidency (that is not a typo) acts very differently. It says that when the president claims there is a crisis he automatically has such dictatorial powers regardless of the consent of the legislature. They claim an automatic right to ignore the Constitution, separation of powers, federalist principles, and the Bill of Rights. In essence Cheney-Bush are arguing that when the president says we are at war, without a declaration of war from Congress, against a vague and non-specific enemy, that the president then has the power to do almost anything he damn well pleases. It is an attempt to establish a dictatorship in the United States. And again I state: if the Democrats had any guts they wouldn't hint at impeachment, they would hold a treason trial with Bush and Cheney as defendants. I recommend you watch this documentary from PBS on Cheney's Law. It is available for on-line viewing here.

P.S.: The analogy to the Reichstag fire is a strong one. As Tobias proves the National Socialists did not plan the fire nor did they start it. They used it as the excuse to grab power. Nothing in my comparison indicates that the Bush administration planned the 9/11 attacks. I consider the claims of 9/11 "Truthers" to be paranoid delusions, baseless and indicative of an irrational mind. Just like the Nazis the Cheney regime used attacks conducted by others as the pretense to grab powers already desired. P.P.S.: To the lunatic fringe, please don't clutter the comments section with 9/11 conspiracy garbage, that is a request from the owner of this blog. If you wish to comment on the topic of this post go ahead. If you wish to push 9/11 "Truth" go babble someplace else.

Remember these words? He doesn't.

It's hard to forget the blank look on Bush's face when he was told about the attacks on 9/11. He sat there and he sat there, dumbfounded. And from what I can see he went through two terms of office in a similar state.

When he finally got up the ability to move he went into hiding. For hours and hours it seemed like we were playing a game of "Where in the world is President Bush?" He headed for a bunker until he was assured it was safe to come out. Of course, once it was safe he rushed out to give barely coherent speeches and try to bath himself in the heroism of others -- politicians love to be photographed with real heroes in the belief that such photos make them look heroic.

In one of his numerous photo ops Bush stood with the men and women who were the real heroes of 9/11. He told them: "I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear yo, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

What did the people, responsible for the attack, hear? Not much. Bush pulled his famous bait and switch. He waved the bloody flag of 9/11 and marched into Iraq to arrest Saddam Hussein. As odious a character as Hussein was he was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. Who was? Osama bin Laden, that's who. And he's still on the loose.

The man who was behind the attack is still free while a vile criminal who had nothing to do with the attack was executed. America is mired down in a no-win war in a hell hole that can't be made democratic without major changes in the values and culture of the country (which can't happen by the force of a gun). More Americans have died because of the Bush response to 9/11 than were killed that fateful day.

Bin Laden might scare people. He might even be able to kill them. But he was in no position to abolish Constitutional rights. Only Bush could do that. Bin Laden's attack only brought world sympathy and support to the United States, Bush's reaction brought contempt and hatred. What good will the US had on 9/12 was squandered by a power-hungry moron. Bin Laden had no ability to diminish the freedoms of Americans. Bush had that ability and used it with relish and the country is the worse because of him.

After seven years of Bush I have to wonder what the hell the Democrats are thinking. They continue to capitulate to this evil man and have yet to grow a backbone. A few of them are brave enough to talk about impeachment -- but only talk about it. My view is that impeachment is a good start but what we ought to be discussing is a treason trial.

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Young hero refuses photo op with President Bush

The young hero of the bridge tragedy in Minneapolis is back in the news. We reported here how he kicked out the back doors of a school bus that was the bridge when it collapsed and started handing out children to be rescued -- 62 in all. And it turned out that Mr. Hernandez had to drop out of auto mechanic school due to lack of funds. And that the school has offered him a scholarship in thanks for what he did. All good news

And we reported how King George did a quick fly over the bridge collapse in order to secure a photo op looking compassionate. Vulture! Now the New York Times reports that Mr. Hernandez not only was swamped with letters of thanks from around the country. But the White House called as well. They wanted to get Mr. Hernandez to be photographed with President Bush. But apparently Mr. Hernandez turned them day and said, "Nope." I personally think more people who do courageous and good things should tell the politicians to F off, perhaps in nicer wording, when they try to muscle in on the goodness of others.

Mr. Hernandez's heroism was not a Bush program. It was not government at work. It was one young man doing what needed to be done because it needed to be done. He didn't do it for glory or praise and he most certainly didn't do it to give third rate politicians (and there are no first rate politicians) an opportunity to get their mug in the media. Good for Hernandez. And one other indication of his decency: he has left Minneapolis for awhile. He says the attention is too much and he really thinks some of his fellow employees at the youth center deserve more attention then they have been getting. He's the polar opposite of the self-seeking, media-hound Lucy Caldwell.

How low can Bush go?

The people at pollster.com take all the recent polls and put them together and then compute an aggregate of all the other polls. This chart shows the approval rating for President George Bush. As bad as this looks it would be even worse if they went back to his approval rating on 9/11. Apparently the attack on America made Bush suddenly popular. Obviously it was knee-jerk reaction to the attack. But Bush support has been heading down rather consistently for several years now. And it can still go lower. Apparently there are still some people out there who support the man. But more people get enlightened every day. On the other hand campaigning against Bush is made so much easier by Bush.

Reagan judge blasts Bush.

A Reagan-appointed judge has openly criticized President George Bush. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth has said that the president's use of warrantless wiretaps are a flagrant assault on civil liberties. Even something like the “war on terror” does not justify eroding constitutional rights.

“We have to understand you can fight the war and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war.”

Lamberth served as a judge on the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002. This court was established precisely to hear the need for wiretapping. Lamberth says it is simply false, as the White House claims, that there are cases so urgent that there is no time to go to the court for permission.

Lamberth says that on 9/11 he was on the highway near the Pentagon when the hijacked airplane hit the building. He called federal marshals to come get him so he could get to work, understanding his presence was crucial under these circumstances. But while waiting he was able to use his cell phone to approve five warrants. He said he has approved warrants in the middle of the night as well.

He said that separation of powers must be protected because “what we have found in the history of our country is that you can’t trust the executive.” Amen.

Now Democrats. Remember this is true even when someone you like is the executive!

Bungling bureaucrats and crazy conspiracy theories.

It is looking like the federal government is going to delay their attempt to force Americans to purchase passports in order to visit Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. This plan of King George is party of his fortress America mind set where he strips Americans of civil liberties on the premise that by attacking his own people he will prevent terrorists from doing so.

But don’t assume any of this was done out of a concern for freedom. They are coming. Already these requirements are in place for air travel and the result has been utter chaos. The issuing of passports under the Bush administration is about as efficient as their handling of Katrinia. Disastrous.

People who have filed for passports months ago are still waiting. Money spent on vacations, hotel books, air flights, etc., have gone down the toilet due to the chaos that is imposed on everything George Bush tries to fix. Surprised? Why? After all this is a man who mismanaged every business enterprise he ever touched. Bush is the Peter Principle in action.

That says that an individual is promoted to his level of incompentence. So naturally with someone as incompetent as George Bush he became president of the United States. And, by his actions, dreams of even higher levels of incompetence.

The State Department still is forcing Americans to get their government papers permitting them to travel. They are only delaying aspects of it. Every American still has to have state permission to get on a flight out of the United States. But those who applied months ago and haven’t received their permits can now fly out but ONLY if they show the travel Nazis a receipt proving they applied for permission. But even this “relaxation” is temporary with the original new regulations going into effect on October 1.

The real problem was going to hit when the passport requirements to drive into Canada or Mexico came into effect. Land and sea travel traffic is far heavier. If the bumbling bureaucrats can’t cope now that regulation will be an even worse disaster.

I’ve crossed over into both countries numerous times myself. I’ve never been able to come into the US with less than a two hour wait at the American border. And the way Bush is handling things it would appear that people will need to put aside half their vacation time just trying to get back into their own country -- though it causes me to wonder why they bother coming back.

This is all part of that bait and switch tactic of authoritarianism used by Bush. It’s going to make America safe! 9/11 you know. Never mind that not a single one of the men involved in 9/11 crossed the US border from Mexico or Canada. Never mind that every one of them passed through US passport control. Somehow this is supposed to be related. Just trust the Fuhrer.

A similar bait and switch was used for his disastrous war. A small group of men connected with Osama bin Laden committed grotesque criminal acts within the United States. Bin Laden was headquartered in Afghanistan. But somehow, and with some process of convoluted Bush logic, that means the US has to go to war in Iraq. The net result is that Bush more than doubled the number of American dead. Great move moron! And that’s only the beginning. He’s made an unstable region of the world even less stable. And that bin Laden fellow? No worries, the US is so mired down in the march toward fascism that he’s still free.

Personally it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to discover bin Laden has been dead for a couple of years. But you need the Bogey Man to scare the children into taking orders. Don’t forget 9/11. Shred the Bill of Rights. Don’t forget 9/11. End your freedom to travel. 9/11 you know. Just keep saying it over and over and kiss liberty good bye.

One last point about this lunacy, and that is to deal with lunatics on the other side. Just because Bush is a dangerous moron doesn’t mean everyone who opposes him has a lick of sense. There are some real daft opponents of Bush.

There is circulating a lot of nonsense from fringe Far Right anti-Bush crazies. Some even oppose Iraq. Their insanity is not due to opposing Bush but due to their delusional obsession with conspiracy theories concocted by people who are neither smart enough nor honest enough to understand reality.

At the top of the list is the absurd rumor that there is an attempt to merge the US, Canada and Mexico into one larger nation -- a North American Union with a common currency, the Amero.

The far Left doesn’t have a monopoly on fools.

One hallmark of such a union, such as the European Union, is the ease to cross borders within the Union. But Americans are finding that harder and harder to do.

This passport debacle clearly shows the US is not moving toward a North American Union but is actually moving further and further away from anything remotely resembling one. Of course that is logic and I’ve yet to meet a conspiracy advocate I thought was being logical. Most just strike me as mentally unbalanced and intellectually challenged.

Most Canadians would rather eat glass than join the United States. And the politicians can’t even agree on what to do about the Mexicans who already live in the United States. Then we have THE WALL that is being built to keep Mexicans out, or Americans in, take your pick. And yet the loony fringe is breathlessly telling us that its part of the One World plot by.... Well, just insert your favorite scapegoat there.

Here’s a hint. If you hear someone going on about the North American Union, the Amero, the NAFTA Highway, the globalists, the international bankers, etc, then you are dealing with someone whose eleveator doesn’t quite reach the top floor. Most of them are harmless so just nod knowingly and look for the nearest exit.

Arrested, imprisoned and dumped, innocent victims of the Bush terror war.

The complete immorality of the Bush Administration can be seen in how men, guilty of no crime, have spent years in the US concentration camp in Cuba, Guantanamo. It was easy to incarcerate them since the Bush Administration has declared that there are no rights in such camps and that the US security forces are free to act as they wish including torture.

That is the hallmark of a dictatorship and it is the reason I believe that the Bushites would act dictatorially in the United States as well if they felt they could they could get away with it. Certainly to the degree possible they have shown utter contempt for the Constitution and even Deputy Reichmarshall Cheney has told the graduating class of West Point that in their so-called “war on terror” they shouldn’t let something as inconsequential as the Constitution stand in their way.

Consider the plight of a couple of dozen Uighurs who were grabbed by the Pakistani dictatorship on orders of the Bush Administration. The Uighurs are an ethnic minority in communist China. They are mostly Muslims and the communist dictatorship has been oppressing this group for decades routinely executing anyone they believe to be separatists.

The Uighurs left Xinjiang Province in China looking for a way to earn a living for their families and to escape communist oppression. They heard that there was a small Uighur village in Afghanistan and went there. The US government, which never lies, claims the village was a training camp that was in some unspecified way connected to the Taliban.

Five of the men who have finally been released say that the only weapon they ever saw in the village was an old AK-47 rifle. There was vague talk about liberating the Uighurs from communist oppression but apparently there was no attempt to do much of anything else.

In 2001 the United States dropped bombs on the village sending the residents fleeing over the border into Pakistan. Here the Uighurs were arrested by the security police of the Pakistani dictatorship, which is allied with the United States --- yes, the US really is getting into bed with some odious “friends” under the Bush administration. And then the men were turned over to the Bush security police who whisked them off to the US concentration camp in Cuba -- a land free of such things as human rights which interfere with government power.

After four years of imprisonment, with no charges ever filed against them, five of the men were released. But to return to China means torture and possible execution. The US won’t return them to Afghanistan so instead they got the Albanians to accept them as refugees. False imprisonment is normally compensated in some way. But then the Bush Administration has never made a mistake -- just ask them. The idea of compensating people for false imprisonment implies they have rights and that is a concept that the Bushites insist does not apply to anyone that the US labels a terrorist.

Even when the US admits that the “terrorist” was never a “terrorist” he is still a “terrorist” when it comes to compensating him for the horrors that were unjustly inflicted on them. So the five men were sent to Albania with nothing and dumped there. They live in a dorm and are fed rice and noodles most of the time. They receive a small monthly stipend from the Albanian government. Otherwise they receive nothing for their false arrest and imprisonment. Now another 15 Uighurs are about to be released.

But Albania won’t take them. And neither will any other government. The Chinese dictatorship has warned other nations not to accept these people. They hope to have all these individuals sent to China to face more torture and imprisonment.

By 2003 the United States realized that these men were not a threat and not terrorists. China wanted them back. China promised they wouldn’t hurt the men. But the State Department knows of Chinese communist oppression of the Uighurs and said it was unwise to send the men there. So the first five were abandoned by the United States in Albania. And the rest remain imprisoned because other nations fear standing up to the Chinese dictatorship.

The US briefly considered sending the men to Gabon. The corrupt government of Omar Bongo saw this as an opportunity to fleece the United States again. In return it wanted massive loans from the US and Bongo met with his counterpart, in every sense of the word, George Bush, to see how much he could extract from the US. His extortion attempt failed.

With the Bush “war on terror” every dictatorship in the world has been supplied an excuse to act in any way they wish. The Chinese embassy in DC says the Uighurs “constitute part of international terrorist forces” and should face “justice” in China -- which would mean execution. This is contrary to their previous promise of not harming the men. So much for the value of their promises. Chinese officials have tried three times to force Albania to release the refugees to them for forced repatriation.

You would think the United States would be obligated to take the men. But apparently the Department of Homeland Security, which seems to be the executive branch of government these days, says the men are barred from entry to the US because they have been “linked” to terrorism. Yet they were released for not being linked to terrorism. And “linked” is a word that means nothing. It could range from “we falsely accused” to “they were involved beyond any shadow of a doubt”.

Meanwhile the men languish in Albania, hoping to find a home after the Bush Administration destroyed what life they had. The men fear returning to China but have no where else to go because the US has dumped them. US officials say they compensated the Albanian government to take the men. Why the men weren’t compensated is obvious -- that would be an admission of error. And the US has not talked to the men or tried to help them since dumping them. One US official in Albania told the New York Times that they don’t talk to the men or concern themselves about their living conditions since “they’re not our citizens”. True, but they ought to be our responsibility thanks to King George.

This injustice is monstrous. That the Bush Administration has dumped these men and refused to compensate them for the crimes the United States committed against them is an indication of the utter moral bankruptcy of King George and his minions. It just shows how little regard there is for the concept of individual rights by the US government today. One can't help but ask: when will George Bush be arrested for the crimes he has committed against others and against the US Constitution? Those Democrats wanting impeachment are cowards. What is needed is a treason trial.

Destroying freedom one piece at a time.

The media today has two stories that illustrate the assault on American freedom conducted by the corrupt, incompetent, and morally questionable Bush government.

The first story concerns a list of 39 people which various human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, contend are being held in secret custody by the Bush administration. These are individeuals who have not had charges filed against them, who are not allowed their day in court, do not have access to an attorney. In fact no one in the government will even acknowledge they are in custody. They officially have been flushed down the memory hole.

Secret prisoners being held in secret prisons is not an institution of a free society. The terrorists who are doing the most damage to the United States are in government.

The second story involves the systematic stripping of Americans of their freedom to travel without state permission. Certain neighboring, friendly nations have routinely been open to Americans for visits without the need of federal travel documents known as passports. Canada, Mexico and some Caribbean nations have always welcomed Americans provided they have some form of ID. They still do.

It is the United States government that is restricting the ability of US citizens to travel without being screened by the federal government first. This is entirely a roadblock imposed by DC and not by foreign governments.

One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration has been utter incompetency at any task it has set out to do. They knew for months that these new restrictions on travel freedom were being imposed. And yet they were unprepared for it.

Thousands and thousands of citizens who had travel plans are finding the US government is screwing them up. Thanks George.

Passport appliations that were filed months ago are still being processed and people are missing their planes. The State Department blames the long delays on “unprecendented demand.” Bullshit. These people are not flocking for the documents because they are a new fad. They are there because George Bush is forcing them to be there. No one is clamouring for federal approval for their vacation plans.

Applicants are being told that a wait of four weeks can now be assumed to be 10 weeks instead. The “expedited service” which costs considerably more than normal passport service is no longer expedited and can take three weeks, almost the time it normally took for non-expedited service. Each passport issued costs travelers about $100 minimum. Then there is the cost of $60 additional for “expedited” service. No one counts the hours and hours and hours that thousands of people spend in line every day as a cost except economists. And Bush stopped listening to economists long ago. Actually he stopped listening to anyone long ago except that little voice he hears which he thinks is God.

According to the New York Times the feds are gleefully reporting that they expect to issue 14 million travel documents this year, compared to 7 million normally issued. If no one took the expdited service that would amont to revenue of $700 million. These really are mobility taxes. If you could travel to Canada without paying the US governtment last year but have to pay them $97 to do so this year that is a tax increase.

The no new taxes claims of the Bushians is a lie. This one change in regulations imposes a minimum of $700 million in new taxes. That is without anyone paying the expedited fees. And that doesn’t count the billions of dollars worth of lost time spent by citizens in endless lines begging uncaring bureaucrats for their documents.

The Times reports:

Much of the spike in applications is attributed to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which went into effect Jan. 23 and requires passports, merchant mariner documents or frequent-traveler Nexus cards for air travelers returning from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Next January, the requirement is likely to be extended to ship, rail and road travelers.

But somehow, the government seemed caught by surprise when crowds began besieging passport offices this spring.

Even now, callers to the automated national passport line (1-877-487-2778) are told that because of “unprecedented” volume, appointments can be given only to travelers departing in the next two weeks.

Callers who are leaving within two weeks are then transferred to a 24-hour automated line that often says they cannot be connected because of the volume of calls and urges them to call back during nighttime hours. The line then goes dead.

By the way, if anyone thinks the Democrats intended to undo these policies, well, all I can say is I own a bridge in Brooklyn which I’m willing to sell at a reasonable price. My advice is get those damn papers and go. I think Americans should travel. I’m just not sure you ought to go back.

It also shouldn't be forgotten how the government is using the anti-immigration lies of the bigoted Right to undermine the freedoms of Americans. In the name of "securing borders" the newest immigration legislation includes requirements for "employment verification." The Know-Nothings have been demanding just this sort of restriction on employment. It means that every time you seek a job you must prove to them that you have the right to do so with a form of ID that complies with the REAL ID system the Bushites are tring to put into place. Every time some special interest group whips up hysteria about something the Feds use it to strip Americans of more freedom. And this hysteria need not be just on the Left but can be on the Right as well. That the anti-immigration crowd, many of whom are just open racists, scream about immigrants is used to track the employment of every American.

At this time there are three campaigns that are being used to erode liberty. One is the "war on terror", the second is the campaign to "stop global warming" and the third is hysteria over "illegal immigration." And the one that is the least troublesome, though not welcome, is the hysteria on warming. I find it odd that people who hate Al Gore because of his warming hysteria are rushing out to support a candidate who beats the immigration drum which leads to legislation like this one. I've even seen fake libertarians who support these requirements of recording federal identification for every employee. It is very alarming for liberty when even some "libertarians" embrace such measures.

How do you destroy freedom? The same way you eat an elephant -- one piece at a time.

He's been knocked down.

I love comedies. I just don’t like electing them.

In the film Ruthless People a desperate married couple kidnap the wife of a clothing manufacturer. The manufacturer stole designs that made him rich and the woman, in the couple, as the real designer. They figure if they hold his wife for ransom they might get what is due them.

Things backfire when the manufacturer, played by Danny DaVito, is thrilled by the abduction and hopes they will kill his wife so he can marry his mistress. To encourage the demise of his wife he refuses to pay the ransom. The kidnapping couple are very confused by this. So they start negotiating lower ransoms. Bette Midler discovers she is being “marked down” and shrieks: “I’ve been kidnapped by K-Mart.” I find that line very funny.

Back when he first ran for office individuals were willing to donate up to $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in order to get their photo taken with King George. By last year he was commanding donations of $10,000. He’s been marked down again. Now the New Jersey GOP has a fund raiser were for $5,000 one can be photographed with his royal highness.

Bush has been marked down. With good reason.

Maybe the troops need less support.

With Memorial Day we think of the dead killed in the wars that the United States has been involved in: domestic and international. And that has caused me to ponder the slogan that is used today to cut off debate: “Support the troops.”

Say: “I support the troops” and people will cheer. Even opponents of this godforsaken war “support the troops”. I watched a video about how fans of the show Jericho are flooding CBS with nuts to protest the cancellation of the show (the only CBS show I saw that was even worth bothering with this season). Right on the boxes of nuts being shipped was the slogan “Support the troops.”

You see the bumper sticker on SUVs and pickup trucks from Maine to California. Why is there such universal acceptance of the slogan? Because it doesn’t mean anything in particular. Or perhaps it really means everything.

It’s a bit like the claim by Americans that they believe in a god. No one defines the term when they say it so everybody nods in agreement -- well not everybody thankfully. So one person means Jesus, another Allah, another Jehovah, another worships a “life force”, others speak of a ”divine mind” or some whacked out guru in some palace in India. By using the one word “god” to cover thousands of definitions a general consensus appears to exist when in reality it does not.

So it is with “Support the Troops”. How we support the troops is left unstated. But King George and the war crowd use the slogan to intimidate war opponents.

I use the term “war opponents” advisedly since I mean Democrats and I’m not convinced they actually oppose the war. I suspect they wish to use the war. Congress could have defunded this venture but didn’t. Why? Because they want the war to drag on until the presidential elections. They want the dying to continue and the dissatisfaction to grow.

Bush built his power based on the dead bodies of 9/11 and the Democrats are building theirs on the corpses of American troops killed in Iraq. Politicians are such vile creatures that they will use sorrow and misery to secure power for themselves.

Voters chucked Republicans out of power in the Senate and the House mainly over the war issue. Most voters want a clear cut timetable to leave Iraq or immediate withdrawal. The Democrats control the House and the Senate and cave in at the last minute to King George. They didn’t need to surrender. They could have held to what they pretend are their principles.

But securing the White House, along with the Senate and the House, is far too important. So to “support the troops” they passed another funding bill. Conveniently that keeps the war going and continues the downward slide in the polls of Bush and the Theopublicans. That increases the chances of a Democratic landslide. And those soldiers who keep on dying in the meantime? You have heard of collateral damage haven’t you?

As I see it no one is really supporting the troops at all. The war is a lost venture everyone knows that. Bush won’t acknowledge it but he knows it. It was lost before it started because he rushed in without facts and information. He ignored contrary voices, as he continues to do with his fundamentalist mindset today. From the day the decision was made to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, based on false evidence, the results of this war were determined. Our men and women will keep on dying and nothing will be gained from it.

Bush’s policy is to deny he makes mistakes. God picked him to be president and he has a view similar to the claim of papal infallibility. He’s the “Decider” and when he decides there is no turning back no matter how wrong the decision. But then his decisions are never wrong. Typical fundamentalist. He supports the troops. And they keep on dying.

Now the Democrats support the troops. And the troops keep on dying.

What a strange definition of “support”. Maybe the troops need less support. Maybe that would allow them to come home to their families before they lose a leg or their life. It’s worth considering.

Carter, Bush and the Catamite

Former President Jimmy Carter is in the UK and his trip has reconfirmed something my appraisal of him. He was an awful president but he’s a decent man unlike the current occupier of the White House is an awful president and an indecent man.

My only quandary about King George is deciding whether the vast amount of evil he does comes out of stupidity or malevolency or perhaps a unique combination of the two. Tony Blair, on the other hand, cannot excuse his actions on account of being dim-witted. Blair knew what he was doing and consciously choose evil. And this brings up back to Mr. Carter and his scathing comments about the nature of Blair.

Carter said Blair's support of Bush and his ill-conceived, counterproductive, invasion of Iraq as “abominable, loyal, blind and apparently subservient.” Carter said that Blair’s obedience to Bush as been “a major tragedy for the world” because without it the US may have thought twice before blundering into a war without victory possible. “"One of the defences of the Bush administration... has been, okay, we must be more correct in our actions than the world thinks because Great Britain is backing us....”

There is much truth to the suggestion that a reluctant England might have held back the dogs of war. Instead Blair was acting as Bush’s political catamite. His unquestionable subservience served what I suspect was his real purpose: war was a justification for his creation of a British police state -- although in reality it only heavily policies the innocent. It is so busy reigning in the liberties of the average Brit it has little time for actual criminals.

Blair left office despised even within his own party. But every catamite is due his reward. Now it is being leaked that King George may reward his faithful servant with appointment as the president of the World Bank. Bush’s previous appointment stepped down in the midst of a major scandal. Scandal with Bush appointees? No!

The reality is that Bush wants to reward toothless Tony for always following closely at his heels and “sitting” or “begging” when master asked. In addition Bush knows that if there is one man in the Western world more despised than Blair it is King George himself. If Blair retires into obscurity hiding from the well-earned contempt of his fellow citizens it would bode ill for the dullard from Texas. If Blair can hold some overpaid, entirely unnecessary office it serves as Bush’s reminder to the world this is how he expects to be treated when he’s finally ridden out of Washington -- unfortunately not on a rail.

The reality is that Bush and Blair are war criminals and deserve to be treated as such. Neither deserves comfort in their retirement though I do believe each is worthy of a cell of their own making in Guantanamo. The one thing that might persuade me to support appointing Tony to this cushy position is if the World Bank moves its offices to Baghdad.

If you scare King George you're a terrorist.

Apparently criticism of Bush the Lesser is enough to get one classified as a terrorist. We know the Theopublican government of King George established a "no fly" list of suspected terrorists. Of course "suspected terrorists" means whatever his Majesty wishes it to mean. It doesn't actually have to mean terrorist. It can simply mean critics of the Royal House of Bush. If you doubt that God has crowned his Majesty as Emperor of All, the Holy Potentate of Politics, the Vicar of Christ on Earth then you might just be a terrorist. And if you aren't then you're weak on terrorism at best.

Here is a first person account by Professor Walter Murphy who discovered that he ended up on the no-fly list. He did manage to get permission to fly from a local federal agent but remember the days of "big government" when you didn't have to ask for permission from the Feds to fly across country. Ah, but the loonies on the Right will tell you that we now have "small government" under Bush. Sure, I believe it. I also happen to believe in the Loch Ness monster, the Yeta, healing crystals, ESP, anal probing space aliens, the Illuminati, and think that Penn & Teller really do perform actual magic not just illusions. (For the mentally challenged and Republicans, that's sarcasm.)

Professor Murphy:

"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

"After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical."

"I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture's argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who had "had other priorities" than to risk their own lives when their turn to fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticizing Bush's false claims by "outing" his wife, Valerie Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. ..."

"I have a personal stake here, but so do all Americans who take their political system seriously. Thus I hope you and your colleagues will take some positive action to bring the Administration's conduct to the attention of a far larger, and more influential, audience than I could hope to reach. "