American Realistan

When I first began blogging back in July of 2003 on a now-defunct site, one of the reasons I gave for my doing so was that I was already aware that the news media was clearly biased in favor of George W. Bush and the Republicans. I was concerned at the time that the GOP policies would cause great harm to the nation, and that the mainstream media was ignoring this probability. Events since that time have shown that in general, I was right - not that this earns me any special distinction as I’m barely a footnote in blogging history. I’m no Kos, no Atrios, nor am I as well-known as the late Steve Gilliard.

Despite this lack of Web stature, I felt that every little bit would help, and it looks like I was correct. An ABC News/Facebook Survey has found that, for the first time in polls since 1996, Internet news sites are rivaling newspapers as Americans’ sources of presidential election news. We bloggers are also the only election news source to show growth.

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I won’t attempt to defend the sorry record of the Democrats in protecting your economic interests and employment prospects. But can you be sure that the Republicans care a whit about you either?

The North American Free Trade Agreement… was opposed by 65% of U.S. citizens in 1993. That was just before President Bill Clinton, backed by all but three of the nation’s 1,300 daily newspapers, eked out a narrow victory for NAFTA with mostly Republican support.

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At the beginning of the secession of the slave-owning states over the election of Abraham Lincoln, The Valley Spirit of Franklin County, Virginia published one of the most honest contemporary admissions that the pending internecine strife was in part about race:

“The Democratic Party maintain that our government was formed by white men to be controlled by white men for the prosperity and happiness of their race.”

Just because the South lost the Civil War doesn’t mean that this attitude had changed - not in the slightest. As New Republic assistant editor Clay Risen wrote in the Boston Globe on March 5, 2006:

“For almost 100 years, a coterie of white elites had controlled the South by leveraging racial antagonisms and legal discrimination to ensure white solidarity behind the Democratic Party. Southern historians argue that the initial shift to the right was led by older whites in a backlash against [Lyndon] Johnson’s civil rights efforts. [Johnson] forfeited the region to the Republicans by signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Legend has it that as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.

“[I]t’s hard to ignore the decades of subtle and not-so-subtle efforts by Republican presidential tickets to court white racism…. According to the conventional wisdom, … white voters were soon gobbled up by Nixon’s racially coded “Southern strategy.”

The modern version of racism doesn’t concern the emancipation of the black race, but the political and economic exploitation of the brown race.

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Today’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis brought back the memory of a warning issued by someone who should know against the decayed condition of American roads, bridges, and waterways.

In a previous incarnation, I looked at this issue, which Trish over at Pensito Review blamed on Bush’s tax cuts. (Once all of the neo-anderthals have rushed over to their keyboards to defend The Deciderer, I’ll resume.)

Sure, this assertion could be dismissed as mere liberal fulmination by those who don’t want to admit that Dubya’s Terror War For Oil led to unnecessary American deaths. But they should listen to one of their own desired economic class.

Back on March 30, 2006, UPS CEO Mike Eskew addressed the Houston Forum. During his talk, Eskew referred to the 2005 report card issued by American Society of Civil Engineers:

“… let’s put it this way: if your kids brought home report cards like this, someone would be grounded…
… aviation system got a D+; navigable waterways a D-; roads a D, and rails a C-.”

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If you arrived here from Blogcritics, welcome! Read on for the supporting quotes.

All of you 12 o’clock scholars out there are probably still celebrating the rise of the Dow to 14,000 recently. If you were watching Fox “News” that day, you would think that we were back to prosperity with no end in sight! Two Mercedes in every garage! Two chickens in every pot!

But you would be well advised, based on yesterday’s drop, not to count your chickens before they hatch.

There are many people out there pointing to many signs that everything isn’t rosy in the economic world. Anyone who has bothered to hear what the rest of the world is saying and doing would abandon all the party celebrating Bush’s economic wreckage and begin to head to the life rafts, for the iceberg is dead ahead of the Bushtanic and the lookouts see it. But no matter how loudly they shout, the revelry from the Wealth Party drowns out the warnings to the helm. For those of you who aren’t enraptured revelers, I’ll relate what is being said.

Mere citizen Ronald Blais of Center Barnstead, NH, wrote a July 20, 2007 letter to The Concord Monitor editor which asks the pertinent questions:

Do these people realize that part of the reason for this [$3 per gallon cost for gasoline] has been the steady devaluation of the U.S. dollar versus the Euro, U.K. pound and Canadian dollar? Since the cost of a barrel of oil is priced in U.S. dollars, the Saudis, Brits, Canadians and Norse need to charge a higher price in order to just stay even.

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If there is one thing that can be said to characterize the White population of the United States, that one thing might be defined as a sense of entitlement, an innate belief that Whites DESERVE the prosperity enjoyed since the end of World War II as the reward for three centuries of conquering all that stood in the way of the progress of the self-appointed superior race. After all, did White Americans not gain a vast territory to exploit at the expense of the Red Natives and their Brown cousins? Was not the first measure of agricultural abundance and prosperity for the elites created through the enslavement of African Blacks to provide almost-free labor? Did not the early modern American Industrial Revolution (in the form of the railroad) benefit greatly from the exploitation of the Yellow men of Asia?The one problem for the White population of the United States is that if one race seeks and achieves dominance, one must also accept the fact that the other races will seek to become the replacement dominant. Such an effort on the part of perceived inferiors would create the fear-driven imperative in the existing dominant portion of the society to maintain a privileged position and a superior status lest they suffer the fate that they themselves inflicted on the others to become dominant. In other words, when one enslaves another, one is himself enslaved. One cannot ever let down as Master lest Slave take over and reverse the roles to be played.

Such is the case today. The exploiters of the many for the benefit the few (read: the wealthy and racist elements of the Republican Party) are facing the growing likelihood that their days as top dog are numbered and dwindling. Nothing strikes more fear into their hearts than the idea that they soon won’t be Number One.

Eventually, they won’t even be Numero Dos.

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“Nobody loves me but my mommie
- and she could be jivin’ me too!”

It’s hard for a Deciderer inside the Beltway these days, what with no one understanding why it was necessary to release wanted terrorist Luis Posada Carilles from custody after all those years of spouting voluminous aphorisms such as “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

As the book George claims to revere more than any other says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16 )

And where is the respect for the Edjimikashun Predzidint? Not only is Kansas abandoning their rigid adherence to his treasured “Abstinence Is All You Need” program, but when George speaks in Latrobe, Pa. at the Benedictine-run Saint Vincent College, which is headed by his handmaiden, the former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives program - Jim Towey - why, there will actually be a protest against George, the Commander Guy!

Has the National Guard forgotten how to deal with protesters? Oh, wait! They’re all in Iraq or Afghanistan, with the remaining few cleaning up Greensburg, Kansas right now. No time for predzidents!

And what of his ability to reach out to the American people for love and understanding? That seems not to be working too well right now either. Viewers are abandoning the “mainstream” media in droves, especially from the ill-considered Glenn Beck of Official Oval Office Offal Eater CNN. As a result, it’s so much harder to get the American people to see the necessity for the veto of the oil war funding bill, a vital act necessary for the White House to reverse the lie that his approval rating is emptier than a $4/gal. gas tank in a suburban Humvee.

But what of his inner circle of Bushies? They are True Red and loyal, aren’t they? Maybe not. At least 20 have abandoned him in the last six months worth of his hour of need. Few are banging on the front doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to apply for the many vacant positions for vacant partisan minds.

Will he be able to draw replacements from the business community from which most of them sprang? Not if the National Association of Manufacturers is any indication. David Sirota reports that the membership of said business group are tired of their leadership sucking Republican big toes like Dick Morris during a visit by the DC Madam’s girls, and want to pressure the Congress to cease “lobbyist-written trade policies” which are “hurting domestic manufacturers (aka. NAM members).” Money talks, and the Bushitter walks!

But is this not the group which contains the Havemores, George’s base? How could they be thinking of their own welfare at a time when their leader needs their assistance? It’s an outrage! It’s mutiny! Why, he should call out the Praetorian Guard, er, the military!

(Psssst! Don’t look now, George, but the retired generals are taking up the cause of those generals still on active duty, those who cannot act against you due to the oath they swore upon commission as officers. The retirees - Generals Wesley Clarke, John Batiste, and Paul Eaton - are buying media time for an ad campaign [Watch it!] intended to further erode public support for your failed oil war in order to save what remains of the American military. May the Freeway Blogger add this topic to his efforts to impeach George!!)

Don’t think George is completely without friends! There’s always the broad shoulder of Wealthy Texas to cry on. But as Jon Ponder of Pensito Review puts it, “There’s no hope George Bush will learn anything from his failed presidency.” Not even to rely upon crooked Texans like Tom DeLay, who will be too busy covering his own sorry hide to worry about George’s.

It’s a good thing George already knows how to pose with a guitar, for then we’ll all understand when he sings:

“Now you see why I act funny baby,
When I do the things I do”

Only we won’t be laughing.

[Abundant obsequious apologies to BB King for abusing his famous lyric for political purposes!]

I have a hard time listening to Republican blowhards who present themselves as the answer to all of our problems, so forcing myself to listen to the entire Republican debate took a lot of effort.One thing I have to note is that MSNBC sent up softball pitcher Chris Mathews over fireballer Brian Williams, who threw heat against the Democrats. If MSNBC had a real sense that presenting the news is much more important than making it, they would have the honesty to reverse the order and send up the softballer to moderate the Democrats and sic Williams on the Republicans. Then we might get a real sense of where the Republican candidatess stand on the issues.

As it stands, Brent Budowsky considered the debates “a waste”:

In neither debate did any of the candidates saying anything important, or memorable, or relevant to the outcome. What we heard, in the Democratic debate, and now the Republican debate, was a feast of gaseous emissions in a political discourse already too polluted. None of the Democrats were JFK; none of the Republicans were Reagan; none of this was a surprise; and none of it mattered either to the quality of our national discussion, the standings of the candidates, or the verdict of history, will which remember none of this.

We will not get that debate from a leadership class that is obsessed with the politics of its own advancement and lacks the courage, clarity and honor to make the hard decisions of life, death and blood that the situation urgently calls for, and our people urgently pray for.

I agree.

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George W. Bush likes to think of himself as a powerful and influential world leader, yet the evidence screams loudly in confirmation of the alternative.

On April 17, 2007, Bush was to host a formal state dinner in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. For reasons that were not evident at the time, Abdullah cancelled his appearance.

In addition, Jordan’s King Abdullah, a half-Brit who has an American-born step-mother, and who has spent more time in George W. Bush’s Washington than any other foreign leader, cancelled his own state visit planned for September.

The reason for Saudi King Abdullah’s cancellation is now revealed: Abdullah denounced the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq by the United States and declared independence from future American interference in Arab affairs, saying in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh that Arab nations would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

Isn’t that what Condoleeza Rice is now attempting to do? And failing miserably as an incompetent always does?

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This post was supposed to appear at Blogcritics,
but they passed on it
for technical and style policy reasons.

A recent commenter at Blogcritics didn’t like my recent post concerning the economy, saying, “These kinds of articles make me think of children that want to change the rules of a game in midstream.”

Funny he should have brought this concept up. Columnist Andrew Cassel of the Philadelphia Inquirer was in the same playlot when he stated, “When my siblings and I were small, playtimes could get rowdy. … my mother would always say … ‘This will end in tears.’ ”

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