American Realistan

I’ve been getting mail from my regulars for the last week or so, and I haven’t been able to respond due to a change in the SMTP policies of my ISP. What this means in clear American language is that I can receive emails, I just can’t send them.

This has me a bit suspicious, in that the stated claim for the instigation of the tighter email transmission policies is to reduce the amount of spam being disseminated, and yet spam - for me at least - isn’t much of a problem. I got a few as we all have, but it hasn’t dominated my inbox.

Rest assured, dear Regulars, that I will - as soon as my real-world occupation ceases its monopoly on my time - make arrangements be become responsive again.

I just wish that was the limit of the communication problems I face. I fear there is more.
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By the middle of next month, the Bush administration will have to present evidence that the so-called Surge is working in order to retain Congressional funding for continued operations. There should be little doubt that this report, to be given to the Congress by Gen. David Petraeus, will be largely a fabrication.

The reality of the situation is represented by an article, posted by Truthdig, written by a US government contractor about to depart for good from Iraq. Truthdig editors post that they know the identity of this contractor, but for reasons that should be clear to anyone who harbors the slightest suspicion of the motives of the Bush cabal, they choose not to reveal it.

After all - what’s sauce for the propagander should also be for the goose!

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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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Guardian columnist Max Hastings writes:

“The US and its allies do not play by the rules they impose on others. Higher standards are expected from a sovereign state than a terrorist organisation. Somehow, though surely not under this US President, this is what we must regain.”

If survivors fear Japan has forgotten the lessons of Hiroshima, have not the American people also? Are we to relive those horrible times again and make George Santayana a prophet?

Are you so enamored of the reams of propaganda that justify nuking Japanese cities during WWII that you are willing to allow the same excuse to be used again, in some current or future war, and do nothing to prevent the use of atomic weapons today?

If so, I hope you are near Ground Zero when a Bomb goes off. Then maybe your ghost can explain to the rest of us what a fabulous experience that was for you as you turned to ash in a flash.

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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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John Dean, in his 07/25/07 post, says that “Conservatives fight dirty and dishonestly.” As a former member of the infamous Nixon White House staff, he would certainly know. Just today comes proof of Dean’s charge against the neo-confidence men:

“If there are cover-ups, the public has a right to know what has been covered up,” Mr. Bruno said, speaking to reporters at Saratoga Springs, the Associated Press reported. He said the [executive] office “has seen fit to abuse the power of that office to spy and track and attempt to really destroy what apparently the [executive] office considers a political rival,” according to the Associated Press.

Strong words! Do they emanate from a Congressional Democrat seeking to uncover the mysteries regarding the political terminations of US Attorneys across the land?

They do not.

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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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Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised – except for all the others.
- Winston Churchill

Gerard Baker, Times of London columnist and is US Editor, reminds us that

A central tenet of neoconservatism has always been that promoting democracy around the world is not only morally right, but also in the long-term interest of peace and stability.

In America these days democracy is living down to [Churchill’s] reputation … where vital national interests – and the security of much of the world – are being determined almost entirely by immediate, panicky political considerations.

The panic grows by the minute, but not in those intended to do so. Those who are easily panicked, such as Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (who defeated highly-decorated Democratic Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland by running swift-boat television ads implying that Cleland was allied with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein), vociferously seek to discover a means by which the American people can be swayed to oppose the efforts of real military veterans (for instance, Vietnam Combat Veterans Democrat Jim Webb and Republican Chuck Hagel - co-sponsors of a bill to extend theater tour breaks for combat veterans).

Did Chambliss himself serve? You have to ask?

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Don Davis of Satirical Political has put up a timely and classic gem:

BUSH’S COMMUTATION OF LIBBY SENTENCE REALLY AN ‘iPARDON’

“WITH THIS LITTLE HAND-HELD GADGET, I NOT ONLY MARCH TO MY OWN TUNE, BUT FIND BANDS THAT CAN COVER MY ASS.”

Thanks to the compliant American corporofascist media, that ass is being covered quite nicely, thank you! Thus, it is left to Donna Marie Artuso, writing in the Winnipeg Sun, to expose the real reason why Libby was released from serving his time - to prevent embarrassing squeeling:

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Bush commutes Libby prison sentence

President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak investigation Monday, delivering a political thunderbolt in the highly charged criminal case. Bush said the sentence was just too harsh.

Is that what Bush would say to Genarlow Wilson, who is under a ten year prison sentence for consensual teen sex ? Would he have felt that way about mocking the appeal by Karla Faye Tucker to stay her pending execution?

HELL NO! That bastard usurper will forgive any sin committed by a Republican faster than he can condemn any act that goes against his wishes, especially if performed by anyone not one of his pet Republicans!

The Democrats are complicit in that their responses to this travesty of justice are so mild mannered as to be tepid. Take House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (PLEASE!):

“He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.”

Check out some of the other lame retorts delivered by the “opposition”:

“The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own vice president’s chief of staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.” — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., at least acknowledges what is now the fact of legal life in our nation:

“When it comes to the law, there should not be two sets of rules — one for President Bush and Vice President Cheney and another for the rest of America.”

But there are, Senator! And there have been - ever since your party passed the Patriot Act without reading even a summary and then voted for Bush’s STAR(K) Chamber [See definition at the end of the post]

“Accountability has been in short supply in the Bush administration, and this commutation fits that pattern.” — Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

I’m sure you’re shocked by this revelation, Senator! Are you finally ready to push those subpoenas through the mail slot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Of the 2008 Democratic Candidates, only New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson expressed real outrage:

“The arrogance of this administration’s disdain for the law and its belief it operates with impunity are breathtaking. Will the president also commute the sentences of others who obstructed justice and lied to grand juries, or only those who act to protect President Bush and Vice President Cheney?”

The only other expression of real outrage comes from former Ambassador Joe Wilson, whose wife’s career as an undercover CIA agent was sacrificed on the altar of political revenge - the very act for which Libby was convicted for blocking the investigation:

“[Today’s presidential decision] “should demonstrate to the American people beyond a reasonable doubt how unbelievably corrupt this administration is from top to bottom. At end of day, it’s allowing a neoconservative cult to engage in special pleading.”

It should be clear to all sentient beings on this planet that there is no longer a government of law in the United States. It should also be clear that there is no one in the Democratic Party worthy of taking power away from those who should never have had it in the first place!

But then, that’s what the STAR(K) Chamber was created to prevent! What is the STAR(K) Chamber? That is the extrajudicial cabal made up of Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and sometimes (K)ennedy, a group whose task is to torture the law until it screams, provided that the outburst is in favor of the desires of the Deciderer. As the ultimate arbitrator of the law, they get to say it means only what they decide it means, without question or oversight.

America, we hardly knew ye!