Bu$hCo Has To Go
The mid-term election this fall will prove to be the defining moment of this country’s future.
After six years of Bu$hCo demonstrating its callous disregard for anything traditional - including the Constitution - it appears that change is on the way - assuming that Diebold isn’t allowed to perform its magic vote tally trick. As an incentive to you voters who are wondering what you can do about this situation to see to it that 10 you aren’t alone and 2) the nation is aware that change is necessary, I offer, via Bill Clinton, the rallying cry of 2006:
“I am sick of Karl Rove’s bullshit.”
They can run with hidden agendas, but Al Gore says they can’t hide from them.
In an article which covers Bush’s pending ‘ecology’ speech, Gore said of Bu$hco:
“One can only attempt to create one’s own reality for so long.”
It must be torture for Bu$hCo to have to [shudder, ***GASP!*** GULP!] CHANGE!
In fact, it is torture that is forcing this change - the torture of others.
The Kafka Strategy
By BOB HERBERT
September 18, 2006
What we’ve seen over the past few years from Bush, Cheney & Company has been the stuff of Kafka, not Madison and Jefferson. What we’ve seen over the past few years has been a nightmare version of the United States.
The fog of secrecy is lifting, and the Bush administration is frightened to death that it will eventually have to pay a heavy price for the human rights abuses it has ordered or condoned in its so-called war on terror. The people who would have to worry, if war crimes were found to have been committed, would be those at the top of the command structure who crafted policies that were illegal and ordered them carried out — or who turned a blind eye to atrocities.
Hence the mad strategy designed to stir up the base, including the use of all that Republican-crap email we’ve been getting from our ‘friends’.
And just who is so vulnerable?
The reason President Bush has been trying so frantically to get Congressional passage of his plan to interrogate and try terror suspects is that he needs its contorted interpretations of the law to keep important cases from falling apart, and to cover the collective keisters of higher-ups who may have authorized or condoned war crimes.
Bush, Cheney & Co. are desperately trying to hold together a house of cards that is ready to collapse because their strategy and tactics for fighting terrorism were slapped together with no real regard for the rule of law.
I observe, based both on the comment thread after the first article and this letter to The Arizona Republic, that this insane strategy is failing miserably:
Bush & Co. have driven me away
by S.T. Bobb, Prescott [AZ]
Sept. 17, 2006
As a third-generation Republican, President Bush & Co. have finally pushed me over the edge with that outrageous piece of propaganda, The Path to 9/11.
In ‘06 and ‘08, for the very first time, I am voting a straight Democratic ticket. No exceptions. Not even for Republican John McCain.
What would drive a life-long third-generation Republican to abandon his party at such a time? Maybe he’s lost and his national leaders have abandoned him in the wilderness as they find their own way out:
Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans
by Hans Johnson
September 18, 2006
Citing extremism, more GOPers are joining the Democrats
Twelve years ago, GOP leaders trumpeted a host of Democratic office-holders who had jumped ship as a grassroots rejection of Bill Clinton and his party. They went on to post huge gains in the ‘94 mid-term elections.
Now, as Nov. 7 nears, a similar dynamic
of popular disaffection with Republicans is taking shape.
A trend of local, below-the-radar party-switches is undercutting Republicans as they face the sternest challenge in a decade to one-party control of Congress and several state legislatures. Such party-switching by elected officials often indicates that the label they are shedding has lost appeal and foreshadows poor performance at the polls.
Some recent switchers are exiting GOP ranks with a bang. Distorted priorities, the federal deficit and the Iraq war are common themes in their announcements. And in a direct swipe at the far-right ideology that has become a governing credo in the Bush years, they cite intolerance in the party as the chief reason for leaving.
“The moderate Republican has been pushed aside for the extreme right wing,” Oklahoma state Senator Nancy Riley told the Associated Press in August, when she became a Democrat. Riley represents a district in suburban Tulsa and has served as minority whip in a chamber that her former party was looking to take over in the fall election. She announced her defection after years of what she described as “abhorrent” treatment by Republican leaders who suffer a “lack of compassion for people.”
In central South Carolina, county prosecutor Barney Giese also switched parties. The law-enforcement pro is the son of Warren Giese, a longtime GOP state senator and revered football coach. His announcement upset Republican leaders, struggling to maintain one-party control in a state that Democrats added to their roster of early primary battlegrounds for the 2008 nomination. “My relationship with some of the leaders of the Republican Party is damaged,” Giese told The State, a Columbia newspaper.
“No one gets elected without bipartisan support.
… My conflict with them started with me being independent.”
On the other coast, Rodney Tom, a state representative in Washington, didn’t mince words when he left the GOP this spring. “I realized that the far right has complete control of the party,” he told the Seattle Times in announcing his switch. “For me to be effective for my constituents,” he added, “I need to be a Democrat.”
Now running for state Senate as a Democrat, he represents a district of suburbs that was once lopsidedly Republican. But Tom says voters there generally back abortion rights, nondiscrimination for gay people, balanced budgets and investment in state infrastructure, such as transportation projects. That has soured them on today’s conservatives.
Tom’s switch underscores a shift in allegiances away from the GOP among well-educated, upper-middle class voters based in part on the strident antigay and antiabortion stands of Republicans. Showing up as much in red states as in blue, the pattern cannot be dismissed as a regional fluke.
* In Idaho, Tony Edmondson, a former county commissioner, broke with the GOP in August. He criticized state lawmakers, who in the spring placed a ballot measure barring same-sex marriage before state voters in the fall. “The legislature decided to focus on issues of ideology and posturing … instead of focusing on the people’s business,” he told the Associated Press.
Edmondson is running for state senate as a Democrat.
* In New Jersey, former state Assemblyman Paul R. D’Amato left the GOP, charging the party with operating a “closed shop that discourages individuality, discussion and openness.” The Press of Atlantic City noted that D’Amato joined two other local elected Republicans, James Carney and Alisa Cooper, who have become Democrats in the past two years.
[P]arty-switchers figure in two marquee races this fall.
* Former Kansas GOP chair Mark Parkinson has joined Democratic governor Kathleen Sibelius as her choice for lieutenant governor on her re-election ticket.
* In Virginia, longtime Republican and Reagan-era secretary of the Navy Jim Webb is challenging incumbent U.S. senator George Allen, a voting-rights foe sometimes pegged as an ‘08 White House hopeful, in his hard-fought reelection bid.
“National security policy under the Bush-Cheney Administration is in total disarray,” Webb said in an August speech.
“There is no end in sight to the conflict in Iraq … and homeland security is being neglected.”
The shift throws a wrench in the Republican machine as it rumbles across a troubled political landscape. Now another gauge indicates Republican political power at risk.
The results of special elections for state legislature in the past year have showcased Democratic voting strength, even in areas the GOP has long dominated.
You long-term readers who have found me here know that I have often proded Republican ‘moderates’ in the Congress to abandon their blind allegiance to their party and vote for the good of the nation. It appears that, in a limited way, they finally have begun:
Sometimes I don’t recognize this country anymore
Who would have believed that one day the United States Senate would be debating whether to approve a request from the President of the United States to statutorily authorize torture?
And who would have believed that the only thing most of the news media would find the least bit odd about that would be the fact that three Republican senators were opposing the request?
Don’t be too harsh on the media right now. They are worried about their own jobs, so they are only writing about what their editors tell them the news is.
The editors seem to be focused on covering what happens to those who oppose the New Working World Order:
Ford layoffs push U.S. total to record
The U.S. car business has announced nearly 90,000 job cuts this year, an industry group said Friday. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting firm, said Ford Motor Co.`s announcement that it was laying off 10,000 salaried workers raises the possibility that the sector as a whole will surpass last year`s 110,016 layoffs.
‘Suppliers may be the next source for major workforce reductions as they adjust to the new reality of smaller American automakers,’ CGC said in a statement. ‘Plant closings by Ford and General Motors will also ripple through the economy, possibly resulting in job cuts throughout a variety of industries, as communities struggle with higher unemployment.’
This next hasn’t happened - yet - in America, but who is to say that it won’t if Bu$hco economic policies aren’t reversed and the damage to the economy repaired?
On India’s Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide
Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.
Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain.
At the same time, frustration is building in India with American multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds. They have made deep inroads in rural India — a vast and alluring market — bringing new opportunities but also new risks as Indian farmers pile up debt.
“Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money,” said Chandrakant Agarwal, a veteran moneylender who charges 5 percent interest a month.
“Farmers, many of them, are ruined.”
Indian farmers now must compete or go under. To compete, many have turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line the shelves of even the tiniest village shops.
High suicide rates and rural despair helped topple the previous government two years ago and put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in power. Mr. Singh’s government, which has otherwise emerged as a strong ally of America, has become one of the loudest critics in the developing world of Washington’s $18 billion a year in subsidies to its own farmers, which have helped drive down the price of cotton for farmers.
The cries of Indian farmers — or what Prime Minister Singh recently described as their “acute distress” — can hardly be neglected by the leaders of a country where two-thirds of people still live in the countryside. A government survey released last year found that 40 percent of farmers said they would abandon agriculture if they could.
Now - if only 51% of the voters would abandon Bu$hCo now that they could!
Have a comment? writerealist@earthlink.net
Copyrighted [©] source material contained in this article is presented under the provisions of Fair Use.
FAIR USE NOTICE
This article contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of democracy, economic, environmental, human rights, political, scientific, and social justice issues, among others. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this article is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.