Monday, January 21, 2008

Today’s Topic: Mixing Adjectives is a Defective Policy Strategy As the presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle continue this long 2 year process to gain their party’s nomination, I believe they are beginning to understand that one cannot have a set of policies that will survive the journey through time and reality. All alternatives are not only in play, but always possible. Today can bring a new reality, but not necessarily one controlled by an administration nor even recognized in a timely manner by the president nor his advisors/controllers. Tomorrow will bring yet another reality as someone outside of the direct flow of our country’s woes has the possibility of interacting within our system and thereby adversely affect all the "feel good" knee-jerk reactions of a group of elected officials with absolutely no forethought or even historical knowledge.  9/11 shows that we can be adversely affected by outside interests and provide 8 years of bad judgement in response. Yesterday brought an email from a friend of mine wondering what I thought about some recent statements made by Jim Cramer and my thoughts are that his proposed $250 billion bailout of his Wall Street cronies would help end our generally accepted recession in short order. At some point one must simply stop dancing with the one that brung ya if they slap you around. First off, this administration has squandered two influxes of cash into the system to try to stave off a recession we have already entered. That won’t work, even if the initial $19 billion and the additional $38 billion helped maintain about a week’s worth of liquidity. After all, you don’t staunch the flow of blood with a Band-Aid, you use a tourniquet. However, I’m not here to write about the consequences of this administration’s faulty economic policies, although I may well come back to it once or twice. Rather, I am talking about how the candidates fail the test of even understanding the question, much less their ability to offer specific solutions to wide ranging problems they are unqualified to determine. And, of course, the language chosen to fool you into thinking that they have a handle on the situation. First off, no one can offer a short-term solution for a long-term problem. There is no magic bullet for fiscal policy that bolsters business by ignoring proven history. You cannot throw money at corporations and think they will then trickle down those funds to their workers. The American economy was helped to evolve by those who used the people, in the people’s names, to further their own personal agendas. For instance, directly after 9/11 President Bush threw $15 billion at the airline industry to keep them flying and keep the oil companies solvent, at the expense of the non-traveling public. There was no regard to the history of the industry that most were already in dire trouble with continuing and growing debt. And the real problem why the American people swallow the bull is the way the information is presented. Short term solutions for long term problems. The above sentence defines the problem by the adjectives to describe the problem. You cannot use "short" in a sentence with "long" and directly relate them to each other. For long term problems you need long term solutions. For global problems you need global solutions. For localized problems you find localized solutions. If people need money, don’t give them money, give them a job. If corporations need money, don’t give them money, give them more initiative. If the government of this country needs answers, elect the people that actually have answers. If a locality has a problem bear within a larger population, one that attacks the people of the community and destroys property, then the local solution would be to kill the bear (hopefully donating the meat to some local "soup" kitchen for the poor or homeless). But there need be no mass killings of bears, either locally or nationally or even internationally. Both the latter of solutions (nationally and internationally) are of a scale which doesn’t match the scale of the problem. As stupid as the above scenario may seem, it is a perfect example of why things no longer work well for the people of this country. We have the equivalent of using a shotgun problem solving methodology in hopes of hitting something, when whatever we are hoping to shoot can’t be killed by a shotgun. Scaling is the correct methodology for determining where resources can be applied and just how much expense those solutions incur. For instance, a perfect example of inappropriately applied national scale to a localized problem is New Orleans. All the well to do in Mississippi had virtually no problems getting government funding to offset what our national insurance companies refused to pay, but in New Orleans the answer is to finally lay waste to thousands of people’s low income homes and build new houses with less than 1/3 of the previous low income housing available. But this isn’t the only problem in the entire fiasco. After a lapse of 5 days and 1900+ dead people, including mercy killings at hospitals because no rescue was available nor anticipated, finally people, largely through the theft of a school bus by a young man, were getting moved to safer locations. What most people don’t want to realize is that safe locations were available right in Louisiana but were denied to those being bussed. In fact, more than one person was arrested for wishing to get off the bus when the buss had reach a location where their family lived. These people only wanted to be with their family and not be a burden on the state, and yet the state decided these people should be arrested for resisting continuing on to their "new" location. The last time we saw such a national solution to a localized problem we had Seminole Indians being forced to marched to "new" locations, even if it killed them. I think it would be important to the people of the United States to have the information about how many people died after being relocated and never saw their families again. If this country were based on good solid family values, then even one family would be the one thing any solution should never tear apart. Certainly wide scale disruption of thousands of families was not the proper solution. New Orleans families would have gladly become a part of the solution of rebuilding the city, but no, they were shipped off by the thousands even as thousands of illegal aliens were being shipped into Louisiana to work for slave wages and live in a level of squalor even the poorest of New Orleans residents hadn’t previously lived. Even a greater example of incorrect scaling to a solution of a problem has been the inability of our internal militias to answer all the needs of our own people, much less become involved in a war on multiple fronts against a tactic such as terrorism. Now I am aware that Posse Commitatus is a part of our law, so I am talking about incorporating somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of our National Guard and Reserve units to fight in Iraq having consistently left our citizens vulnerable to internal and natural disasters. Two circumstances come to mind in execution of national solutions to local problems, one again in New Orleans where private contractors from Blackwater were deputized to use deadly force in the streets when virtually all local services had been suspended. The other is the lack of the ability of California to adequately fight the most recent spate of Santa Ana fueled fires and "private services" organizations gladly went into fire ridden areas and protected their client’s property while watching the spectacle of our paid fire fighters and civic minded volunteers fought a losing battle. America used to know this stuff. We had the ability to answer local problems or disasters with local solutions and the national government was requested to do only AS MUCH as necessary to contain the spread of the problem, not apply broad reaching and exorbitant measures that created even bigger problems without solutions. However what we got was a national government whose very decisions in every facet of American life have degraded even the ability of the average American citizen to help another citizen with anything but money. As I said, throwing money as a short-term solution doesn’t fix a long-term problem. However, what we have with both our Republicans and the Democrats is a continuation of throwing short-term solutions at long term problems. Mitt Romney suggests that he can get jobs back for the people of Michigan when he knows he cannot do any such thing. John McCain tells them that he will offer new training for new jobs he’s not going to be able to create. Barrack Obama brings a piddling amount to the board on combating the loss of economic health, and the only difference between him and his two adversaries is the amount of money they are willing to throw at the problem. But they haven’t researched the problems much less come up with a reasonable solution. So when people tell you that they have a solution to your problem, and your problem is that you don’t have jobs and can’t get proper medical care for your family and your government would rather split your family up rather than come up with solid solutions, just remember this. If they use two diametrically opposed adjectives to describe their policy, that policy is failed from the start. 1:30:25 PM    comment []

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Today’s Topic: Once Again the Bush White House is lying to America The Bush administration has stated that they are handling email system backup tapes "in accordance with the strictest industry standards". Unfortunately, they probably won’t be caught in the lie. There are three possibilities, none of which jibe with the above statement in any way whatsoever. The White House is operating within the strictest standards of the industry and they have the tapes. This is plain and simple. They cannot do one without having possession of the other. The White House is purposely lying about backup tapes being reused, which in itself is a problem with law and White House communications being a part of the official records guaranteed by law to be sacrosanct against destruction. The White House technical contractors are an inept bunch of bozos who should be fired from the contract and never again able to bid on a government contract. In this particular case collusion is suggested between the White House and the contractor. As usual following the money would point up who profits from this collusion. In two of the three above scenarios, the tapes and data are intact and being hidden from Congress and the public. In the third, if any contractor is worth their salt and has some level of intelligence, backup tapes will still be available to protect themselves from obstruction of justice charges at the least. Destruction of public records is even a worse crime, so what would you do? But the analysis here is that the tapes exist regardless of which scenario presents itself as the truth. So here’s how backups go. It’s fairly easy in design but complex in execution, at least in how one can write about it. And yes, backups are time consuming, but then they are automated and besides, if you get paid to do backups, then that is how you are supposed to spend your time to make your living. Regardless, there are some stringent rules about backup storage, particularly when we’re talking about records of our government doing the people’s business. The basic system is a grandfather-father-son system, whereby backups are initiated on a daily basis (the son), the last (7th) of those being considered a weekly backup (the father) and each month’s ending backup is the grandfather. By maintaining ending week and ending month backups, both on-sight for quick retrieval for system crashes, one can restore a system to a particular state by loading all of the backups into the system in oldest to newest order. However, for purposes of the storage of governmental backup tapes one is required to have a secure off-sight storage facility that could even require being shock hardened, meaning that some catastrophe which could conceivably destroy even an entire IT center wouldn’t destroy all the information. That entire center could be remotely rebuilt and the system could be returned to a state as recent as yesterday’s backup. The choice is either distance from an IT center as an acceptable off-sight storage parameter, or some local facility which could withstand a direct assault with conventional weapons. And nothing in this scenario even considers the fact of system redundancy. All governmental systems have some level of redundancy, whether local or remote. These are the "strictest industry standards". There is no such thing as simply reusing tapes and destroying years of records that belong to the people, even if the people themselves are not privy to the contents of the information stored. I have personally worked on projects within the US Government which aren’t even as important to maintain as White House records, and never once have I ever designed a system which didn’t have all of the above attributes and fulfill the requirements, including redundancy. The preeminent concern is for the secure storage of the records, not saving a few lousy dollars in backup tape purchases whilst reusing tapes and destroying records that are, by law, required to be maintained in perpetuity. If one wishes to question the above, then one only has to look at the legal battle between Nixon’s White House and Congress when Nixon’s tapes were discovered to have been recorded. These were the people’s records even if President Nixon was allowed to maintain possession of them. Within his library those very tapes are available for research to the public and have turned out to be a font of knowledge about Nixon’s interactions with his inner circle, including discussions on how to handle Watergate and the attendant payments to hush up the Plumbers. Of course, Presidential records were one of the first things that President Bush decided to reclassify as secret. In fact, he felt so strongly about establishing control over these records that he did so within the first 10 days of his presidency, which was 8 months prior to 9/11, so one has to wonder just what he had in mind at the time. It was obvious to me that this president favored secrecy over accountability and I’ve written about that in a number of previous blogs. Now I’m not saying that presidential records shouldn’t be classified nor should they be available at a whim to whomever wishes to peruse them. But the fact is that Congress has the oversight requirement which places the onus on complete and accurate records being maintained by the executive branch in general, and the White House in specific. So no matter how one wishes to view the subject there can only be one overall assessment of the situation and that is that the White House is lying to the American people yet again. We’re not talking about spin control, or a missing 18 minutes of conversation. No, we’re talking about something as large as 5 million emails, of which you can believe none are spam or phishing. Nor does what I’ve covered so far even come close to the abuse of public law on White House communications when this administration chooses to circumvent the laws by using outside and unprotected communications via the Republican National Committee’s email system, of which neither security of the plain text messages nor the appropriate backup and storage of said plain text messages is assured. I mean, just how stupid can this administration be to employ wide ranging and unwarranted wiretapping of all internet data including plain text emails, and then suggest that all of their emails have been destroyed? If those messages are inside the White House then there ARE backup tapes off-sight, and if those messages are via the RNC then the NSA most certainly has them.    "More than two years after this problem was first discovered by White House staff," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)  said, "the White House still has not identified the cause of the problem, determined the volume of emails lost, or developed a plan for restoring those emails that were lost." Welp, I just told you.  The White House either has them or has means to recover them.  One has to assume that there are people running around their office, looking under their desk or plants, and saying "Nope, not over here." So what is more easily believed, America?  That the industry standard for maintaining information isn't good enough or that Bush wants to have those emails missing? George W. Bush has been a fuckup his entire life.  That's the only history you have to look at to be able to point the finger.  But watch out.  Bush will pull it thinking it a good fart joke.  And Cheney will laugh and laugh as he sticks the latest bundle of White House emails up his butt and walks out stiffly. 11:08:23 AM    comment []

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Today’s Topic: Antigua, Gambling, and the disregard for American Intellectual Property Rights On December 21st, 2007, the United States government showed Americans just how much infringement can be foisted on member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) without consideration for the achievements of a member country’s people. This disdain was shown through a World Trade Organization decision that Washington had wrongly blocked Antiguan online gambling operations from the American market. The fact that these organizations have and continue to provide online horse racing gambling is a moot point, but also an interesting dichotomy that the US government should address. The fact is that the United States holds control over its own gambling concerns and has reason to want to limit outside gaming influences. There is a necessity for control over both income assessments of the gamblers of American citizenry for appropriate taxing and for purposes of maintaining control over what often becomes undue influence over gamblers, particularly those whose positions can become compromised even up to the point of damaging National Security. The real problem is that under American treaty with the WTO a method of payment to end the dispute was enacted which directly took rights away from Americans. Specifically the method used was to allow Antigua to violate US copyright laws by distributing films, music and software, amongst other copyrighted materials, without payment of the fees usually a necessary part of an intellectual property owner’s income. This action of allowing another sovereign entity the right to be compensated by free use of a different country’s people’s copyrights is a direct tax on a specific portion of the American people without any representation or possibility of addressing their grievance with the taxing organization. While Americans and American companies are fighting to maintain their rights to distribution of their copyrighted properties, the WTO is freely throwing those rights away and can do so by treaty. We actually don’t need to question these actions because we’ve seen it before, time and time again, with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The United States takes precedence in negotiations whatever the ultimate consequences. By being a participant in the WTO, the United States has given up a number of freedoms of their citizenry in order to promote a political Empire, and a corporate Hegemony. And let’s not get this wrong. I am saying that Imperialist America is a front for global command by Corporations who have the rights of citizens in the United States. Oh, but they have a lot more dollars in their pockets, and this is why the US supports an organization like the WTO without any support from the American public because our membership wasn’t even publicly notified of such a treaty. Currently the WTO is not so much of transparent organization, but that it is still an organization which despises the intrusion of its closed meeting events. The coolness of which this organization presents itself should be an affront to all Americans who wish to set for themselves and their country the avenues to pursue. If the country wants our servicemen out of Iraq they should have or servicemen out of Iraq. But if America wants one thing and the WTO wants another, well the guys with the money who have multi-national business concerns are going to win. Come on, America. We have some old soldier’s homes because some of our people need it. Especially those who have served our country, We have PostTraumatic Stress Disorder filling the ranks of our returning workforce due to numerous tours to a war zone. Even Ronald Reagan wasn’t this stupid. We have a total shift in taxes from the federal level to the state level, and now we have the federal government not paying the appropriate amount of those revenues to the states, requiring even higher local taxes. We have the World Bank going into sovereign countries to establish a foothold into their economics, thus giving the opportunity to blackmail arising countries to either shit or get off the pot. And then the IMF steps in with even more stipulations about how this country can ultimately become even more indebted, whilst looking to be a responsible economic motivator. As usual, America’s government has put the American people into an untenable position where our own expansive control over other nations has turned around and bit us in the ass. Now we have super-governmental agencies deciding for you and me that if we come up with intellectual property, properly applied for and received, then you still don’t have the right to collect your royalties. If this world is going to go global, and I think it is, then we are going to have to accept some legal precedence in determining just who has the say. I’d say that the individual who properly registers his/her intellectual property has the ultimate say over the use of their product. By establishing the highest level of control we combat the opportunity of one’s efforts and intelligence being exploited. By the WTO rendering their judgement, Pandora’s box is open to scrutiny. What is available in Freedom of Information Act requests? What is possible to pry away from the defendant that may adversely effect the security of a nation or the world? Antigua doesn’t necessarily have to decide to ramp up factories which duplicate American music CDs or American movie DVDs, but the fact that it can by virtue of the WTO decision means that there’s a lot more at stake in globalization than has previously been noticed. 12:47:14 PM    comment []

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Today’s Topic: The Trickle Down Effect of Bad Federal Government Some might call me a cry-baby for complaining about this, but I have to say that the federal government is just passing all of its tax cuts directly onto the states to make up the difference. You see, it is the local governments that need to supply services to the population, while the federal government provides services to agencies and administrations. There seems to be a dichotomy here in that the state and local governments are not getting the funds from federal taxes owed them, so they need to apply increases in taxes to their constituents, neighbors and families. The concept is falsely based that the federal government can cut taxes that directly effect the state’s ability to recover their fair share, thus foisting the blame onto state and local politicians. The fact is that we, as individual states, do not have to allow the federal government to change the historical functions of government and leave all the bad stuff to the locals. In fact, we already have proof positive of the federal government acting so irresponsibly in foreign affairs as to seriously and adversely effect the restoration of an American city not attacked by war, but by nature. The Executive Branch does not have the right to declare war without congressional approval under the War Powers Act, but we need to look closely at just how adversely our people have been effected by the execution of those war power acts and how hundreds of thousands of Americans remain displaced by the actions of the federal government simply bussing them to some other state or location. And it only took them 7 days to respond quickly, once they knew that perhaps 2,000 American citizens had died. If you look at the problem at all the obvious thing that slaps you in the face is there were not enough National Guard to help. The Coast Guard did an admirable job, but in terms of In Place National Resources, there wasn’t enough to even get off the ground, much less hit the ground running. Why, one might ask. Well, because fully ½ of Louisiana’s National Guard apparatus were in Iraq. Guess what? Today is 2 January 2008 and those resources are still in Iraq. And yet this isn’t really the bulk of my argument nor even my piddling little gripes, but a symptom of a serious problem in America. And this gripe comes from the failure of the federal government to actually protect the citizens by virtue of bad economic, foreign policy and military judgement. So in two days I have paid $4 US in Maryland State taxes instituted on 1 Jan 08 for two packs of cigarettes. Ok, so what’s so bad about that? Well, it seems I’m likely to pay an additional tax of $365 per year because of an addition brought on by the tobacco companies and their manipulation of their product’s addictive ingrediant. I’m told that the money will go to the state’s portion of Medicaid to cover the federal government’s failure to supply all the needed funds. This means I’m supporting a program of which I cannot ever take advantage. I don’t mind so much that some of my taxes go towards free education, as there is some direct personal advantage towards having reasonably schooled individuals running around the neighborhood. But I have to admit that paying the highest tax on a seemingly forced habituation is contrary to reasonable tax law. Why would anyone want to tax what would immediately become lessening revenues, either by smokers quitting smoking or more likely purchasing out of state? Or perhaps even more obvious is why not tax people who continue to use gas guzzling cars money in order for them to get to work? Every person has to get to work, but how they do it is a taxable situation, whilst cigarette smokers, as long as it is possible, will order from some internet company who may charge shipping on the purchase, but doesn’t charge state or local taxes. If we have any real strength in our ability to direct law, then one has to remember that laws are made to be INCLUSIVE, not EXCLUSIVE. By dictating that smokers have to pay a tax for a purchase when others who don’t make that same purchase is an exclusive tax. That doesn’t mean it excludes all purchasers, it just TARGETS a particular type of consumer. I think the excise tax on my tires is less than a week’s worth of cigarette purchases, and they cost me hundreds of dollars. Even with the taxes involved with owning and operating a car, meaning fuel, exhaust emission inspections, et al, is cheaper than one year’s worth of smoking a pack a day in Maryland. And even while this is a particular thorn in my side about federal tax cuts and how they might trickle down whilst our state and local taxes increase, I’m more pissed about the fact that the federal government needs to step up to the plate and take care of the American citizen so that when my state or local government requests help, there is help available to request. Hell, I’m not averse to paying higher taxes as long as they go towards the benefits of the people. Education is a definite advantage to the people, and this federal government has under-funded a federal mandate. That’s actually against the law. By placing the onus of strict testing achievements without funding, the tax burden has fallen to the states and local governments who apparently cannot comply. New York City had 159 schools rated as failing in the latest report. I think its something like 54 of those schools will be closed. How does consolidating our children into bigger and more centrally located environments apply towards the ability of our children to learn? How can an inner city mom with 2 ½ jobs accommodate a trip across town to pick up their child if he or she is sick? How can school in one region of Harlem be shipping their children to some school miles away and maintain any continuity of family and neighborhood? Washington, D.C. itself is closing a number of schools. This is the city from which all federal law exudes, and yet our schools cannot make the grade because the tests are a failing effort to determine whether one can learn or not. Perhaps the way towards a better educational system is to not have teachers living in the same projects and housing that their students live. I’m not saying segregate the children from their teachers, but rather those teachers are foremost the first line of defense in our country’s national interest by supplying well taught children. Our teachers need to teach our children to THINK, not HOW TO THINK. But the largest number of test results seems to indicate that our system has failed to teach our children how to LEARN in the first place. This is the essential failure and the problem rests directly on our federal government for sheep creating policies since Ronald Reagan. The republicans have long desired a flock to which they direct, whilst the "elitist" left wing educators have the audacity to teach our young how to learn and to think freely. I find myself in awe by how the republicans have created an art form of disassociation whilst proclaiming the ideals of the American people. For instance, no farmer wants his son to work on the farm all of his life unless he can do something positive with his legacy. Farmers who have fought nature and the government and ended up losing their farms to a large Agro-business certainly would want something better for their sons. The concept of family farming has gone away, not because a child cannot understand the value in their parent’s efforts, but because their parents have to scrape everyday to even survive, much less have something to show for their efforts. In the 60s and 70s there were high school sponsored agricultural classes which taught these same farmer’s sons to better utilize their farm resources. After Reagan, that was all shut off and now we have the majority holder of American soil being multinational Agro-business. Without an education, how is one to continue on with the family’s dreams and strengths and hopes and desires? When Monsanto wants you to buy corn seed from them but you have to either buy new seed next year or pay Monsanto a royalty on the use of subsequent seeds, how does a small farmer survive? Thousands in India are committing suicide because of bad crops and continually larger debts to the likes of Monsanto. Iraqi farmers are soon to follow. So the local seems to go global within the span of a couple of decades, and we are "benefiting" from the fallout which is being promoted by the same federal government who has continually failed the American people. Even this doesn’t go far enough on the concept of "trickle down". The decline of education is but a part of the concept. By Bush’s connotation "No Child Left Behind" is really the same type of previously used nomenclature that hides the real outcome. By leaving no child behind in this administration’s declarations, the obvious outcome is that all children are left behind. In other words, coming to comity by virtue of an under funded mandate, we haven’t reached comity at all. We are failing school systems without regard to the social harmony, which would be present if we raised the knowledge/skill level of all the children at the same time. Perhaps the better way to look at it is if we somehow raised all the children that excelled to a level of less obtrusive and more aggressive manner in terms of paying educational expenses for those rather than expecting the average American parents to pay for further education. You cannot separate the cream if you continue to shake the milk can. No Child Left Behind shakes the milk can. By continuing to shake the schools based on test scores, all fall to the bottom as a result. In order to find the cream, you have to wait once again. The point is, if it comes down to it and I have a say in how I pay taxes, I’d much rather pay the same amount of taxes I will pay in the next year for cigarettes and apply that dollar value to raising teacher salaries so that they might engage their students rather than trying to get through the day with their students having no more knowledge. The trickle down effect, in this particular arena, means that I pay taxes for purposes where the average American has a stake. Sure, take my money, but take it for a good cause and wrest away the control of the federal government when they do no provide the services to the states and the American people they are sworn to provide. 2:20:17 PM    comment []

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Establishment Clause and the Freedom Clause Amendment 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America begins as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof:" The Establishment Clause The first ten words apply specifically to whether it is appropriate to establish a federal government approved religion for the United States. The founders obviously said no, and in no uncertain words that need multiple between the line interpretations layered over by speculation from spurious different interpretations of the Federalist Papers and other documents of the time. The decision was made that this new type of government was a reach in the first place, and with the knowledge that each of the different colonies already had what could only be called "established religions". However, since the call and duty of the new federal government was to be for the general defense of all the colonies (soon after called "the states"), and for the purpose of trade and foreign relations, religion should hold no sway. This idea was the reason for the Establishment clause, even with the knowledge that the individual states had religious concentrations that would undoubtedly hold some amount of import to their particular states. In fact, throughout the colonies atrocities occurred or the denial of even the most basic of human rights were withheld from people of different faiths for a couple of hundred years prior to the Establishment clause. And this is where the Constitution stood up and made a distinct differentiation about what states could and could not do in reference to established religion. If one looks at the logic it is pretty easy to follow. Virginia was established with a large Anglican population, Massachusetts with Puritans, Pennsylvania with Quakers. If, as a state, they chose to continue with an established religion, and also took it upon themselves to follow the principles of the Constitution by ratification, then intrinsically there could no longer be an established religion because of the Freedom Clause. The Freedom Clause "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof:" Six little marvelous words that apply specifically only to the preceding Establishment Clause and yet put the entire Constitution into clear and concise terms. For it is not possible to have states establishing religion and yet allow others to practice their own religion without some negative recourse. The reason is simply this, and it only took us 200 years to figure it out for our black population, but the fact is that once you have a state religion the "devout" will notice those whom did not attend service. Oh, they may well be allowed to attend their own service, but if you notice they aren’t at your "state supported" service, they automatically become segregated. Regardless if they choose to attend their own service or not, or whether they don’t even believe in a service of some religion, they implicitly have been segregated from society. So the disestablishment of religion ultimately ended up across all the states, for you cannot guarantee freedom to practice religion if you allow those missing from your religion to be counted and taken note of. The consequences of practicing religious freedom do not allow for the establishment of legal segregation, as would be the case under a state religion. The concept is pretty easy to accept when you realize that the Constitution was written years after the Declaration of Independence, and a war had been fought by pulling together patriots of all stripes to fight a common foe. However, the differences were undoubtedly seen and felt and responded to as pertains to religion between these diverse patriots. No one can actually work with people from another walk of life or some other point of religion without noticing that such differences were present. But the common foe also brought the commonality of brotherhood to our first army as we all pray to the same God when we’re in foxholes. These experiences of war, of brotherhood, and of tolerance would logically find their way into the Constitution. And the terminology would be such that each expression of content was the expression of intent. There appears to be a continued concern over just what the quotes above actually say, or, more specifically, if those words actually could convey intent of the founders to limit the influence of religion over a federal government, and if "free exercise" really meant "to the fullest extent". My viewpoint is relatively easy to grasp because I’m not trying to read between the lines. But what I’m going to do is answer some of the questions there seem to be continually popping up by virtue of using the plain and simple language of Article 1. The logic I present above might be perceived as a less informed version in comparison to some of the highbrow discussions that I have heard of late, but one fact negates misinterpretation. That fact is that not only is the idea of segregation bad for religious affiliations, but its downright bad for any American endeavors that favor one side over the other, or causes people to congregate in cadres, protecting their own, betraying those not like them, and generally limiting or negating a path to national "self". So let us take this just a little further in history and see how religion played a part. Ok, so the founding fathers have already had their say, the states ratified the Constitution, and we have a number of states whose insistence about laws on slavery don’t really sit well within the Constitution. So Congress adopts the Dredd-Scott Resolution and each state can act upon the controversial topic of the right to own slaves as they see fit. Well, the right to freedom of religion certainly wasn’t seen the same in those days as abolitionist preachers were breaking the law in most of the southern states. And if abolitionist preachers couldn’t preach, then those who believed in abolitionism couldn’t practice their religion freely, whether black or white. And this brings me to a big point. When a legal entity goes into a contract with another legal entity, or in partnership to create such a legal entity, then the state ratifying the Constitution could not have both free practice of religion and laws against preaching a religion that does not support slavery. Again, segregation. We can do what WE want, but YOU cannot. The 1st Amendment of the Constitution was the one definition that clearly stated the necessity of maintaining the union of the states. In my opinion, this is the divining point of the Constitution itself. For if we extrapolate the concept of Establishment and the clearly established Freedom clause, then there are no avenues that allow exclusion as a byproduct. This is as masterful of a stroke in the birth of any government as has ever been made. But instead of continuing to look at the problem in the macrocosm of the birth of an entire nation, let us take a close look at a more recent investment of our soul as a country. I’m talking about public schools. Now while publicly supported schools are so much of a new thing, and certainly nothing specifically defined as an obligation of the federal government, the application of the 1st Amendment is extremely appropriate in terms of what publicly supported schools can and cannot do, particularly when it comes to the pronouncement and support of an established religion. Now I know some might ask what the heck segregation has to do if our school populations are reasonably represented in attendance, but the same concepts prevail. The problem is that the original concerns of desegregating our schools only answered the question of race attendance, thereby leaving us to abide by other rules when it comes to religion. And in a microcosm such as a local public school, it is not possible to allow the expression of religious freedoms without dividing the students into camps of "with us or against us" mentality. For instance, whilst it may well be a possibility that a normal morning "prayer" could fulfill most Christian requirements, certainly it has nothing to do with Jewish children attending public school. And if one is actually to be allowed true freedom of expression of their religion in school, then, at the least Muslim children would have to disrupt class in order to kneel towards Mecca and pray the three times during the day they are required during the time that school is in session. So let’s say that we set aside some space where these Muslim students can go pray without disrupting classes. Do you believe that other students wouldn’t notice? Do you think that there would be some major source of backlash against a group of children that segregate themselves away from the rest? Are they actually doing something against us secretly and being supported by their religious freedom to segregate themselves from us? And this is the point. No person should have to recognize a specific religion against their will nor suffer the consequences for choosing not to abide by another’s religion, but also that the personal practice of religious freedom can not segregate you from me or whites from blacks or Christians from Muslims. It is no wonder that the founders decided the Establishment and Freedom Clauses were so important that they were the first sixteen words in the Bill of Rights. The Constitution established the government and what it could do. The Bill of Rights established what the government could not do to the citizens (along with the fact that the Constitution could be amended for just such cases). And it all comes down to not allowing the establishment of any particular ideology or religious viewpoints that then negate any other’s viewpoints from the conversation. Otherwise, why have the rest of the 1st Amendment, which defines the freedoms of assembly, free speech and the press, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances? 11:45:12 AM    comment []

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Today’s Topic: This Presidency’s Results Were a Dead Government from Day One A couple of things I read in reports yesterday, plus William Rivers Pitt’s article (Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond, 26 Nov 2007) on truthout.com were basically some level of rehash of articles I’d written months to years ago. On Friday, 6 Nov 2006 I talked about presidential failure due to using politics to make policy. This wasn’t the first time I’d talked about the subject, but only the easiest to locate in my some 1,000 pages of blog printout. One of the areas I was speaking about then was "how many things so imperative to the good and faithful execution of the laws of this country depend on the integrity of a man and not the ideologies of political parties." My concern then was that we didn’t elect politics to run the country but rather politicians whose expressed concepts of what government should look like appealed to our individual ideals as voters. I further said, in reference to this administration using politics as policy and thereby harming Americans and our system of government, "it is the ill-conceived and aggressive political ploys that have continuously placed Americans in harm’s way." Of course, in 2006 I had not read Jack Goldsmith’s "The Terror Presidency" because it had not been published yet, and thus did not really have a grasp on just how insidious and widespread the poison of politics as policy had grown. And it only took me until page 24 (hey, I just got it yesterday) to find the most clear cut case of politics undermining the proper functioning of our government. The appropriate eye-opening passage is quoted "(John) Yoo (second in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel) saw (John) Ashcroft much more than Jay Bybee (Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel) did, but he took his instructions mainly from (Alberto) Gonzales, and he sometimes gave Gonzales opinions and verbal advice without fully running matters by the Attorney General." There are two self-evident statements in this one passage that illustrates just how badly the concept of chain of command was misunderstood within the administration. First, Ashcroft met with the OLC’s second in command more often than the man in charge of the OLC, Jay Bybee. Secondly, the fact that John Yoo, as second in command of OLC, seemingly ignored the appropriate chain of command and worked most directly for the President’s White House Legal Counsel. Some of the conflicts are simply outrageous in the first place, that being if Jay Bybee was such an incompetent fellow as to be ignored in his Assistant Attorney General position then how the hell did he get his job and who was stupid enough to put an incompetent person into that important position? And while I’ll admit that there is strength in people networking there is no acceptable reason for Alberto Gonzales to be giving direction to John Yoo without the direct knowledge and approval of Yoo’s boss. And in Gonzales’ position as the White House legal counsel, he virtually had no presumed nor hypothetical power to direct ANY Department of Justice official. Nor anyone at all in any department of the executive branch. There are no Constitutional powers given concerning the Chief Counsel to the President. Conversely one cannot fault John Yoo for being forthcoming with advice and legal determinations requested by an office which favors the President’s office in its quest for extended power. Undoubtedly in the same circumstance anyone may well have assumed that his or her inclusion on the President’s War Council would automatically have been approved by one’s direct supervisor. The higher level of political direction would most likely be lost on anyone far lower on the totem pole. The choice to ignore such important a person as the Attorney General isn’t available to those below the AG’s rank. And if policy were to be deemed the fundamental and normal working of this administration, indeed John Yoo’s participation and behind-the-scenes advise would have been viewed as being approved by the Attorney General’s office. Following the above quote, Jack wrote "This arrangement was an understandable affront to Ashcroft, who worried about the advice Yoo was providing in the Attorney General’s name." Obviously John Ashcroft was not privy to what was being represented as his words to the President. And one need remember that after the Ashcroft’s international announcement of the detention of Jose Padilla, John Ashcroft simply fell off the political map in Washington. His next important statement was of the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as the independent counsel of the Valerie Plame (Wilson) outing. From that point on the Attorney General was no longer an effective or even respected member of the executive branch, regardless of whether it was John Ashcroft or his successor, Alberto Gonzales. It is somewhat ironic that the same office Alberto Gonzales demeaned in his effort to ignore John Ashcroft ended up providing Gonzales with his own demise, and precisely for the same concept of politicizing the Department of Justice. Obviously George Bush doesn’t really recognize the cherry appointee jobs for he killed Alberto Gonzales’ public life almost as swiftly as if he’d come out and said Alberto Gonzales was a liar or a thief. Perhaps being a close friend of George W. Bush isn’t all that much a good place to be. No, it doesn’t matter who you are in the Bush administration. Over the long run, the use of politics as policy will initially kill the people placed in administration appointments and ultimately will dismantle that position’s power and independence for which they were designed. There is no better way to kill government than to simply make all of the governmental position worthless. For instance, we currently have a highly politicized governmental entity called the Environmental Protection Agency, whose mandate was to provide protection for the environment and subsequently offer the American people a safe and clean world within which to raise their children and supply the country with it’s future. Today’s EPA seems to be working for the companies that historically have polluted the environment with impunity by virtually stopping all investigations into corporate malfeasance and purposeful environmental abuses. How much more could one kill a highly effective agency than to politically change the fundamental balance of mandate vs. corporate influence via politicization? The same question can be asked about the functionality of the Consumer Protection Agency, whose mandate is to protect the people from unsafe consumer products being sold on American markets. And, of course, since the time that politicization has been in place we’ve seen nothing but more and greater degrees of imported products being harmful. Not only to our dogs and cats, but also to our people in general, and most importantly, to our children, who are the future of this great country. And there’s the politicization of the CIA with the appointment of Peter Goss and that appointment’s outcome was indicative of just how destructive politicization is. Many of the best the CIA had to offer simply resigned in protest, just as a number of highly qualified people in the Department of Justice had resigned. The American people were informed of this process of politicization early in the administration’s first term when it became known that PBS was under assault, and that normal news presenters were coming under contract to the administration to "present news" that was not news but rather an insidious form of propaganda. Taxpayer’s money was spent to sway the taxpayer towards the government’s way of thinking. So we have a new method of clearing out all of those whose jobs were to determine the best for America by virtue of keeping the environment clean, keeping consumers protected, and keeping America informed by use of good intelligence and Americans protected by a Justice Department that held the law higher than the particular person holding the office of President. Is it any wonder that William Pitt thinks that Bush is trying to kill the government? My only problem with his speculation is that he didn’t take it far enough. The last and only time other than the Presidential election of 2000 this country was close to a coup was directly after Franklin Delanore Roosvelt was elected President in 1933. At that time it was a corporate conglomerate that chose Marine General Butler to lead some seemingly peaceful 500,000 WWI vets against the government to demand pension payments due to be paid in 1945. If General Butler had the lack of character this president displays, America would have been dead 70 years ago. Well, not only did General Butler have the character to expose the plot, but FDR had the character to employ those same WWI vets in the WPA program, thus giving them a reason to continue working FOR America rather than against it. I see no reason to allow America to become a dead system of governance now. Too many people have fought and died for the principles this country was founded upon. Too few are currently trying to kill the current government to be effective unless the American people continue to succumb to a malaise of indifference. For America’s sake remember the fallen and those who strive to perpetuate the goodness American represented over the past centuries. Today there are maybe two WWI veterans still alive. WWII veterans are dying at the astounding rate of 1000 per day. Korea and Viet Nam veterans are succumbing to PTSD and committing suicide, along with current soldiers and Iraq/Afghanistan vets, at the rate of 120 per week. The DOD is dunning wounded Iraq and Afghanistan vets for a return of the enlistment bonus promised them on the successful end of their tour of duty. Excuse me, but if you are enlisted to fight and can no longer fight because you suffered incapacitating injuries, you have successfully fulfilled your term of contract. You fought until you couldn’t fight anymore. In the game of death one cannot expect anything more. Apparently this administration can expect more. They obviously have the last vestige of governmental functionality in their sights before they leave office. While they nay-say the public knowledge of programs and pogroms and distillation of governmental functionality, they conspire, cajole and commit theft in the names of the American people, leaving us to do the cleanup of $2 trillion in war debt and wounded lives, of lost opportunities for the victims of Katrina, and squandered opportunities of solid diplomacy. At the end of all that this administration has to offer we have the hope that this president cannot travel overseas just as Donald Rumsfeld cannot. Why? Because Donald Rumsfeld has already been indicted in Germany for War Crimes. I hope George W. Bush REALLY LIKES Crawford, because he won’t be going overseas anymore after 20 Jan 2009. It is too bad that this Congress cannot see the criminal intent in this man’s presidency. Apparently America now sees, at the least, a man that is not competent to lead America anywhere, which is why they voted in a Democrat majority in both houses. Unfortunately the voters have been left out in the cold. Lastly one of the main points I want to bring up is the administration’s concept that international law limits the power of the President. Well, yeah, but hey, treaties have to ratified by a majority of the Senate and as such then become the law of the country. One cannot say that a treaty gives away American power but rather the ratification process places American power within the framework of law where Americans want to be. A large number of international treaties were actually instigated by America. The concept is pretty easy to divine. As America stands for human rights simply because a human being has rights amongst all other human beings just for being a human, there is no conflict. You cannot ignore any treaty that specifies humane treatment of humans no matter where atrocities occur. The concept is located in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence as our "inalienable rights". The concept of illegal aggressive war was initiated by the United States as a pre-requisite to the establishment of the United Nations, and yet this administration and its supporters suggest that such law isn’t a requirement for which America needs to adhere. This is simply false. The entire representation of sovereignty over international law shows a marked and intensely stupid view of how law comes into place and the same negates the advancement of a people whose history is steeped in freedom and democracy. Indeed a rising tide may well raise all boats, but only if those boats actually float. The problem which exists today is that people in America are no longer certain of where America stands on issues such as human and civil rights since we still have our own problems at home. But with an administration that turns an ugly blind eye towards human rights abuses from governments it supports, one has to assume that human rights aren’t really all that big of a problem for this government to ignore. The solution is to pronounce human rights as the absolute for which America will support the necessity of war, and only if the end result is that an institution of civil rights becomes law. After all, there is some advantage to being the strongest military might on the planet. However, this administration just likes to flaunt such possibilities in your face as President Bush signs a "letter of declaration" with Iraq, thus perpetuating permanent bases in Iraq and a negation of the all important "oil law" that gave selected companies the right to exploit Iraqi oil reserves over the objection of the Iraqi people. This "letter of declaration" seemingly has all of the power of a treaty but does not require the ratification of the Senate. I believe this is just another abuse of law by this administration. So what do we do? Well, apparently we declare war on anyone that has resources we’d like to control, and along the way simply devise a method that negates the American people’s wishes by making up some quasi-legal document that bypasses all of America’s history with regards to negotiations with foreign countries. I haven’t read my newly received book "Broken Government" by John Dean, but it’s the next on the list. 1:43:58 PM    comment []

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Today’s Topic: Torture In The Real World In yesterday’s Truthout 18 November 2007, Elizabeth de la Vega had a riveting commentary on torture, but she simply did not go far enough. I plan to take it further, and to do so in short order. If a man lives his life in accordance with all the laws of the state and country then he can be truly said to be a patriot. If a man serves his country he can be truly said to be a patriot. If a man serves his country and, at some interim point, decides that he can no longer support the mechanism that governs the country, then truly he can be said to be a patriot. If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to office he cannot be said to be a patriot. If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to the office of the President of the United States he cannot be said to be a patriot. If a man never served the country and by happenstance or mechanization gets elected to the office of the President and one man dies from torture during his tenure he CANNOT BE a patriot. We forget the rule of numbers in our imposed clinical depression. One man, twenty men, foreign "enemy combatant", American citizen, who the hell cares anymore? But the law says that one man dying of torture is against all that America and 138 other countries have stood for in the past 60 years, and the President presiding when one man dies from authorized torture is NOT a patriot. Don’t get me wrong. Terrorism is real and frightening, but this country has fought greater threats with far higher moral clarity and far greater loss of our citizen’s lives. Indeed the terrorism we fight today is due to the fact that America feels it may play fast and loose with foreign policy, such as choosing to support a dictator in Augustus Pinochet instead of Chile’s elected President. And it is a fact that these willy-nilly decisions usually result in tens of thousands of innocent deaths along the way. General Pinochet learned how to intimidate and terrorize his own people with lessons from the United States via the CIA. Now the US is putting those same lessons to practice on our own people. How many? Who knows, but one man, woman or child is TOO MANY. Where is America’s remorse for these acts? The answer is that we lost the ability to have and show remorse when we lost the ability to see that our laws are fully functional and unambiguous and treaties are our acknowledgement of international law by signing these treaties. The White House lawyers would like you to think otherwise. So today we are still playing the same foreign policy games in supporting Pakistani President Musharaf’s regime and double-dealing to enlist his countrymen into the war against terror by bribing and arming these same people who are hiding the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin. Nothing bodes well with this fast, footloose and insane foreign policy. Remember the definition of insane is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. After all, we armed the Afghani people and now the people we seek in Pakistan are using those arms against us. Our foreign policy is obviously a broken instrument. And our enemies can see this. I’ve said it before, but it bears worth repeating. If ONE American isn’t free in this country, then ALL AMERICANS ARE NOT FREE. If one man dies by the hands of Americans by torture, all Americans are sullied and soiled. We can no longer sit by and have our government tell us that common sense knowledge is too much for an American citizen to grasp. We have juries indicting and convicting on the basis of evidence presented to them in cases both local and federal. We have innocent people languishing in jail because of this principle and a failed court system that continually changes the balance between the accused and the government. But in large our court system has the ability to handle this terrorist situation just fine. But when we can simply torture even ONE person to the point of being dead or, in the case of Jose Padilla, becoming unable to help in his own defense, we have exceeded the mandates of law and lost our moral and guiding light. Just take a moment to consider this case. On June 16th, 2002, Time bellied up to the Bush Administration’s line about how this man was unequivocally guilty of the accusations thrust upon him, yet for 4 long years this American citizen was held without any charges and subsequent representation in court. No telephone calls, no lawyers present at his interrogations, and no ability to address the court directly, his right of habeas corpus being violated from the moment he was "arrested". An American citizen was placed in limbo for 4 years, and when outside actions finally forced the situation to the US Supreme Court, the Bush administration cheated and moved him into a system that was likely to convict him even though he could offer no appreciable defense support. One of the prime elements of adversarial law in this country is that A) a defendant has the right to question his accusers, and B) that a defendant has the ability to help in his own defense. A man unable to have either of these benefits of an honorable society sworn to these ideals is a man doomed to the mechanization of a morally corrupt administration. Again let me say, if ONE American is denied his rights then NO American can lay claim to their rights ever again. At least one cannot claim their rights without concerted effort and removing the offending administration from power. Of course, the point is moot if you haven’t read the article I started this blog with, but the fact is that even you can determine in your own mind those actions which you would consider torture. If you can make that leap, then it’s not that big of a leap to say that virtually any American is more than capable of understanding the definition of torture, regardless of what the Bush administration says about the legal complications. The only complications are presented by the administration and their inability to understand the 60-year-old laws of the Geneva Conventions, which America initiated. It’s the old game of "look over there" whilst one is stabbing America in the back over here. I’ll have to agree with both Karl Rove and Lewis Black in the same statement. Once your attention is moved to something they are already doing something else because you are not paying attention to THEM. Karl Rove said "we are creating new realities, and while you analyze these new realities for history’s sake, we’ll already be creating new realities". Lewis Black said things were changing so fast that he couldn’t write it down quick enough to make fun of. If both the administration and our comedians can make fun of the same thing from different viewpoints then its time to re-evaluate our existence as a free country. And it’s most definitely time to re-evaluate the performance of our executive branch and adjust accordingly. After all, reality is actually what is real, not what we are told to believe is real. Certainly Americans have at least the brain power to understand the difference. So if we have an environment where one American can’t fight the system because the system keeps changing, how can you or I expect to have any of our rights? The truth is that we don’t need more restrictions on the rights of our citizens, but a return to our history of rights and concern for our citizens well being, which was what made us great. Any President who decides that he decides without the consent of America isn’t deciding anything. He’s dictating. Any questions? 3:43:01 AM    comment []

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Today’s Topic: American’s Need to Quit Looking at the Past As I normally peruse a number of newsprint and blogoshperes, I can’t help but notice that the one true thing Americans must do is move ahead. I don’t want to say move on because that’s a Bushism. We need to be forward looking, projecting into our future what we want this nation to be or forecasting what this nation will become if we don't step in now and stop it. Talk about your rogue states. Certainly the United States must be cast as the most audacious of the rogue states of the world. We have a lame duck President who ignores America like no other lame duck and holds more sway over Congress than any even reasonably intelligent president we’ve ever had. I say it’s time to stop spouting history and start making history. I recall running into a woman one day in 2003 whilst at the local pool supply store, and she was STILL trying to get petitions signed about the 2000 defeat of Vice President Gore. Now I admit there were more than enough problems that still need to be looked at for posterity’s sake, but the fact is it was time to get over it in 2003, and it’s time for all of us to get over what the facts are in this past 6 years of President George W. Bush. What we need to do is be pro-active in terms of limiting this son of a bitch’s grasp for power. It might not hurt to legislatively take some of that power back as soon as possible, but we need to start now on deterence. History is on the side of the legislature even if the Bush administration thinks they can continue to get away with lies, misrepresentations and national security threats. When President Reagan was supplying support to a repressive government in Central America, the legislature stopped funding. This has not happened once in Pakistan, but many times, always seemingly repealed by the Republicans. Repressive governments are always where Republicans in power place their trust. Is it any wonder that America itself has become a place where "legal dissent" is practiced inside a cage miles away from presidential events? And what are the ramifications of standing behind those jail cell-like enclosures with the public? Perhaps two fold, one being that protesters should be in jail, and two, that those in jail are nothing but a bunch of whiners, therefore protesters are nothing but a bunch of whiners? I think it’s easy to see how genuinely we are distracted when I can’t even write about being forward looking and pro-active about not allowing our power as the people to be usurped by a continually over-extending executive. If the Republicans win in 2008 one can expect an extenuation of this same power grab, and if a couple of Democrats win in 2008, we can expect them not to easily relinquish they power they inherited. An editorial by Frank Rich in the New York Times yesterday, 13 Nov 2007 made a statement about America being in a clinical depression. Good reading, Frank, as I had said the same thing on this blog two years ago, and prior to that I spoke of the fact that depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was already being exhibited in Viet Nam veterans due to this war. And I spoke a couple of articles ago about how many WWII veterans were dying per day, and just two days ago, one of the last handful of remaining WWI veterans passed away. Sixty and seventy year old Viet Nam vets are still pretty prevalent, but the lessons learned with them didn’t seem to help this administration prepare its all volunteer military for jumping into a war that might last for a decade or more. Little things like following the law such as requiring all military to have a current medical prior to being shipped into a combat zone. This was primarily so it was possible to tell whether a soldier was physically or mentally injured in war or had pre-existing conditions that should have precluded that person from being deployed. It is a reasonable requirement as it does save the taxpayer money from supporting a soldier who wasn’t honestly disabled by the war. One has to admit though, that the likelihood of physical or psychological trauma isn’t going to be faked by all that many soldiers. However, medical certification for combat readiness didn’t happen in the beginning of the Iraq war, and as far as I know the military has said the last physical of a soldier was what was required by law, not an immediate medical prior to shipping out. In the old days of the draft, the physical one took FOR THE DRAFT WAS the record for a soldier bound for Viet Nam, whether or not they were physically or mentally ready to fight a war. So with this little back step (again) I have to say that forward looking is a requirement for the treatment of our returning troops. For return they will, regardless of what any White House says. We can positively look forward when we have full medical for war victims, including spouses and children, and when we vote to pay them back with the ability to better themselves through higher education via the new G. I. Bill. We can look a little farther forward by formulating an encompassing bill for national health coverage and continuing to pass it up to the president until he or she signs it. No president can ignore a veto overriding passage of a bill. We can stop the aggressive dialog with Iran by voting a "no confidence" resolution to be placed in the Congressional history books rather than kowtowing to the White House by including the recent resolution effectively declaring war on the Iranian Revolutionary Force by labeling them as terrorists. We can be pro-active by voting in a resolution that PRECLUDES a president from attacking any sovereign country preemptively. If the Supreme Court rules that the legislative cannot dictate policy with law, then the legislative has the right to declare they will not fund any preemptive actions. Congress has the money belt and once continuing funds run out the executive cannot do anything without breaking the law, as was seen in the Reagan years when Iran-Contra was bilking taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars and the S&L bailout was just a year away, bilking taxpayers out of billions of additional dollars. I know, the latter was not a funding issue, but a deregulation issue and I certainly agree. But to be forward looking we have to look at the past. We cannot allow the continued and unbridled efforts to steal the treasure of the United States by people who obviously are willing to continue stealing. This means that a current president cannot borrow on our descendant’s futures to wage war today. Without the ability to borrow money for war, there can be no war. And there can be no semi-clandestine "no bid" contracts for supporting a war unapproved by the American people. You have no choice but, as a legislative branch with the power to write laws, to put a stop to no accountability in contracting, spending and borrowing, and highly monitor situations whereby the executive claims national security issues without informing ALL pertinent members of Congress. Oversight Secret clearance must be granted to all members of Congress of committee level. It is not the executive’s right to define whom is allowed to see secret information in the legislative branch, but it is their right to limit that information to the entirety of the appropriate oversight committee. No Chairman and Vice-Chairman situation, but a truly inclusive briefing of all committee members at the same time. Pro-actively I’d have to say we need to determine and establish a plan for the future of America and it’s interrelationships with other nations. When Ronald Reagan established the policy of never negotiating with terrorists, well, we know now that he did so whilst speaking out of the other side of his mouth to the American public prior to his being elected. We have to start establishing a basis for the rest of the world to trust us again. This is the paramount problem we have today. The concept of reestablishing trust overshadows all that America can and will do in the next one hundred years. It is not possible to continue to lie to the world or the American public because we have too many avenues of information available to us. As discerning individuals our knowledge has come hard won, and the availability has been under assault for 6 years now. And for those who didn’t know, no, it was not 9/11 that brought the first type of eavesdropping on Americans since the time of Richard Nixon, but only one month after George W. Bush came to office. That’s right. In February of 2001 George W. Bush already wanted to know who you knew and what you talked about. Gee, nice guy George isn’t really such a nice guy at all is he? Being pro-active isn’t what the Republicans are griping about. They choose to couch the subject in terms of judges, 55% of whom are Republicans, voting in ways they don’t like. Being pro-active means doing exactly the same things today as our Founding Fathers did when they designed the Constitution. They chose to allow each branch of government to try to govern by their own methods, but used the other two branches to expose the fallacies and bring about a much higher form of government by those checks and balances. Americans can provide leadership by contacting their Congressional representatives and telling them we will not allow such things to be done in our names, the such being supporting a dictator in Pakistan or any government who doesn’t support the ideals of elective democracy. However it may be that the best method is to have Congress pass laws that expressly forbid any president to initiate covert or overt military support or spending with repressive regimes. If that fails the Supreme Court test, again, simply bind Congress from releasing funds in the future. The Supreme Court can only rule on a law passed based on its Constitutionality, not if it suppresses Congress’ ability to provide funds for Presidential elective wars.  Congress defines their own rules of operation.  By limiting the possibility of a declaration of war from any Body of government but themselves, Americans are best served.  By playing to strict party politics only Americans suffer. Hey, if you hire someone to work on your house, you want your house the want you want it, right?  So why put people into power that want your house different than you want? I know, it sounds weird, but the fact is that Congress has given their power to declare war a number of times by accepting the War Powers Act, which gives the President the right to strike anywhere in the world to protect America’s national security interests, but these actions have to be reported to a full Congress each 90 days. The Act actually says "to Congress" but that is the entire legislative branch and individuals don’t make up the entire Congress. Most presidents have ignored this concept and chosen the individuals they wished to brief, thus violating an existing law. It is kind of like when Alberto Gonzales said "no expressed right of habeas corpus is given in the Constitution". Well, yeah, that’s true, but when we have a passage which expressly forbids "habeas corpus" from being taken away from the "any person" described in the 5th Amendment, then we have habeas corpus established. If one cannot take a right away, the right is given.  For this to not be the case would be like saying "thou shall not kill" in the Bible means that you can’t actually kill someone, but you are able to have someone killed. American law both federal and state already says this isn’t true. The right for someone to live is expressly given, whilst death by your hand or some other’s hand in your name is expressly forbidden.  This is but one question for the Pro-Lifers and how they can accept the death penalty. Obviously it makes no sense to continually "re-define" laws or previous interpretations of law in an effort to overshadow existing law.  New law has to be established that supercedes previous law and takes America back from the hands of any president in power who chooses to ignore the plain message in the people’s votes. Pro-active measures in both houses of Congress can make clear the end of the divide of our nation by those who would cause you to fear the loss of your child if they didn’t torture prisoners or listen into Grandpa’s conversation with little Sara.  Or those who buy your trust with tax breaks as they barter off parts of America to those with the money they wish to borrow. Those who tell you it is fine to dissent in America but then put you behind bars from which you must spit your words onto an invisible public. Pro-active measures mean voting out those who do not express your ideals in Congress, or worse, substitute their own. Pro-active means bringing America back to its senses. We do not have to continue the path of greater and deeper grasps for power that lead to loss of civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We need not fear losing anything American if we adhere to those words so adeptly written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. We are honor bound to make those words the ideals of WHY we have the Constitution. They are all linked in our history and define our ideas, but we must maintain control of those who would try to adversely redefine America. 12:09:21 PM    comment []

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Today’s Topic: There’s More Than Just Hope For The Everglades Today, Saturday, November 10, 2007, the New York Times offered up some praise, faint that it may be, for the advancement of the inclusion of the Florida Everglades project, which has fallen behind to the point of being ignored by President Bush. The problem isn’t JUST that the Everglades need to be restored to the tune of $4 Billion plus, but the fact that we are not thinking big enough. Not by a long shot. Seems people have forgotten of the 100 year floods that happened both in 1993 and 1995. I talked about Chaos Theory in my last blog, but here we have two incomprehensible events happening in a short time. One in a hundred? Well, Chaos Theory doesn’t talk about that. Probability answers that question. What was the probability that 4 hurricanes would ride their way through Florida in 1992? Well, again I digress, and the answers to the above questions beg one to look a global warming as one of the culprits on raising the ante to something greater than one in one hundred. What I’d really like to talk about is that Congress has over-ridden a Bush veto and the important thing is that our Congress is finally thinking about something that has already been affecting our farmers and marine industry, but involves the most important fact of infrastructure. America has lots of problems with infrastructure, and I don’t think I’m letting out any State secrets when I say this. And yet, no matter how much political noise is made by any administration the viewpoint is "why fix it if it ain’t broke?". My question is why let any circumstance get so bad that it needs to be broken before it gets fixed? One of our prevailing problems has been the fact that America thought it could actually "TAME" America, and we went into major destructive mode in order to do so. What do we have for all the effort? We have Las Vegas squandering water on displays that are, indeed, impressive, but just as obvious, hugely wasteful of our unsustainable supply. In ten years Lake Mead stands at ½ full and it has the bathtub rings to prove the point. We have an entire ecosystem in the delta of the Mississippi river that has been killed by up-water obstruction of the Mississippi’s floodplain, and as such, has killed nature’s ability to re-supply the outer islands with slow moving silt which, in turn, kills vast amounts of a hurricane’s power. And we have the effort to "control" the water flow through the Everglades by canals and opening up dredged and drained areas to the poisoning affects of industrial farming. I don’t believe that anyone has done a study on the changing of fresh water into the Caribbean, although studies have been done that show a main detriment to our coral reefs is a nutrient rich environment that wasn’t there a century ago. Truthfully it’s no wonder that those in the Northwest argue about water allotments that either favor cattle farmers or ones that favor the spawning grounds of Pacific Salmon. It is also no wonder that people question why a one in a hundred year flood adversely affects them because they live on the riverbank. ALL RIVERS FLOOD. ALL COASTLINES ARE POTENTIAL DISASTER AREAS. ALL CITIES BUILT ON FAULT LINES ARE LIVING ON BORROWED TIME. CHAOS THEORY SAYS THAT YOUR BEST ESTIMATE IS TOTALLY OFF, EVEN WITH THE BEST DATA. However all of this is only a symptom of the problem, not a plan to alleviate the problem. As painful as it will be to our treasury, America needs to re-establish what the native Americans already knew. As hard as it is to imagine, we are talking about not only fixing the Everglades, but also going around the country and fixing the natural state of our environment. America only has three hundred million inhabitants and yet we’ve found a way to screw with all the ecosystems that supplied this enormous nation with plenty of natural resources. In fact, without our greed, 90% of the world wouldn’t have to worry about global warming. If you lead by example you cannot complain that others followed. The suggestion here is that Americans have the ability to put many thousands of people back to work on fixing the problems rather than letting them languish in a pool of self-loathing because they aren’t productive members of society. The 4.7% unemployment rater continually espoused by the Bush administration is only those who have recently lost their jobs and have ended up getting new jobs. Those hundreds of thousands who didn’t get a new job after one year of their job loss are off the books. We have no actual idea of how many people in America are out of work. I propose that any work under the Water Act specify that companies under any investigation by the US Government be exempt from getting no-bid contracts, and that includes companies such as Halliburton, KBR, and Bechtel. No contract administrator should accept a bid from the above and any others who currently or have previously had governmental investigations. The Army Corps of Engineers should hire local people to whatever capacity they have to add to the project, and no exemptions should be allowed under "specialized knowledge" unless such knowledge has been demonstrated in the uncontested fulfillment of a number of prior government contracts. Locals should mean people local to the job and not require anything more than some proof of local inhabitation (utility bill or tax statement). Emigrants should not be penalized for a negative emigrant status. After all, the Constitution supported slavery during/after the Civil War and our Chinese immigrants were abused and placed into somewhat of an indentured servitude. Our current residents of American should have an equal opportunity to help save our waterways. Without such a level of help nothing will be achieved. If our illegal immigrants will work to help replace our waterway infrastructure, then we ought to rethink our ideas about immigrants, illegal or not. But it is not just global warming that is the problem or even a people problem. One of the most prevalent problems is Russia has already declared that their claims on resources extend to the North Pole simply because they accept global warming. Assuming that this precedence holds up, America only has the entire coastline of Alaska to claim in the event that global warming opens up the north, and American corporations have taken advantage of the possibility of an open North Passage in purchasing otherwise useless property. On the other hand, when Americans can no longer grow crops or hold jobs in America, they will start immigrating to Canada. The likelihood, however, is that when global warming requires paying personal attention to, such as moving 1000 miles north to plant crops, the act itself will be too late to save anyone. We have severely pressing scenarios for consideration right now. People still live on or near threatening volcanoes and major fault lines. People flock to flood plains for agriculture. Disaster prone areas are like magnets to large corporate resort construction, ruining eons long natural protections such as barrier islands. These islands themselves reduce the storm surge of a hurricane by as much as a foot per mile. When a natural disaster like Katrina shuts down our shipping port of New Orleans, hundreds of millions of dollars are lost to farm products, which depend on that port. The storm surge, as Katrina moved slightly east of New Orleans, was the worst place the hurricane could have hit. Almost 2,000 people died from a natural disaster, which could have been anticipated and relief put into place PRIOR to the storm’s landing. The massive agricultural effluents of the Florida peninsula are killing the fragile coral reefs and giving us an idea of just how bad our idiocy can be. Again, not all of the above is necessarily global warming indicators, but I really had to bring these things up because nothing is being done about them and we have enough data for a warning. Part of that warning has become human beings, meaning Americans, shouldn’t be screwing with the natural flow of our water systems. Nor should we become so dependant upon a single port that our ability to ship product is hampered. However, let us not forget that our actions in changing massive waterways to suit our own needs have a direct impact on our ecology. For instance, not only are our coral reefs dying off, but also had we known earlier they would have been an excellent indication of our ecological health. So we have not only screwed ourselves by losing all the silt which would normally be deposited as barrier islands in the Mississippi delta, but we have screwed ourselves by not paying enough attention to the indicators that told us we were on the wrong path. So this is why I propose that we stop the Haliburtons and KRBs from having any access to contracts designed to help re-establish our waterway infrastructure. And since we’re talking about putting good hardworking Americans back to work, why not start thinking about that old dilapidated electrical grid that George W. Bush himself promised would be upgraded? NASA got more money to go to Mars and yet our electrical infrastructure is 40 years old and susceptible to failure or attack. In fact, if one thinks about it, virtually all of our infrastructure is old and susceptible to failure or attack. 3:47:53 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Today’s Topic: The One Reason Democracy Worked In America During the beginning of the Bush administration’s reign I had succumbed to political debates on a group full of recording engineers, and along with others, we totally lacked respect for the people and concepts for which the newsgroup was founded.  To those whom might still read these blogs, I apologize.  I already did so on RAP, buuuuuttttt... It's too bad because some of my best writing was on that board. Perhaps one of these days I’ll go through an extensive Google search and recover some of them. But the one thing I couldn’t make some people understand is that democracy is something that has to be earned. Democracy cannot be given nor forced. I spoke at length about thousands of years of culture and the reticence of a people to change their traditions. Democracy only means something to those who want it. Democracy means nothing to people whose lives run in either a clan or a feudal system. Even though we are in the 21st Century, there are more people in the world who place clan higher than regional concerns, and regional concerns higher than national. This is not a recipe for democracy. Some people tried to yell me down with statements that I was wrong because everybody wants democracy, but we’ve seen that this is not true over the past 5 years. And we’ve seen it even more in the problems presented by President Musharraf’s total takeover of Pakistan when the possibility of a real democracy was drawing nearer every day. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned from exile just recently and I turned to my wife and told her that Bhutto would be killed in a month. Within slightly over a week a massive attempt on her life left a lot of people dead and over one hundred injured. Fortunately Prime Minister Bhutto lived to be bombed or shot to death another day. Whether Musharraf had any compliticy with the attempt on a political opponent is irrelevant for the purpose of this blog, although one only has to look at who would benefit from just such an assassination to point the finger. No, what the assassination attempt really points to is the fact that most countries who have lived with a feudalistic system aren’t going to go quietly or quickly into a democracy where those in charge automatically lose their power. And power is the key. Power is the reason that democracy was fought for in America, and why societies who already have an existing major power structure thousands of years old are not good candidates for democracy. So let’s get started. First, there will never be a democratic government born from a federal government imposed upon the people by force and personal power. The lesson from Iraq should be the recognition of a failure to foist democracy upon a country that never had democracy. Hell, if you take Iraqi society down to the family unit you’ll find the most basic of systems that only allows one person the power over the family. By both thousands of years as mostly nomadic tribes the family was ruled by the father or elder. In terms of moving slightly up the ladder, power was vested in the most successful of the clan. Some despotic clans certainly followed a leader more incline towards those actions defined by being despotic, but overall clans moved in groups or founded small areas within a village, township or city. The question of having a centralized power structure never enters the mind. This is why the only federal power recognized is that which is consolidated by the most nefarious of individuals. Not throughout history, but certainly throughout the past 100 years. There are some differences in the last 50 years between Iraq and Iran, but this is not due to the fact that America interfered with both countries somewhere along the way. However the results were virtually identical in the consolidation of power through internal force and intimidation virtually eliminating the possibility of democracy coming from outside force. Saddam took power by subterfuge and in doing so ordered the assassination of numerous allies and foes alike. On the other hand, Iran had an elected government of which the CIA designed the overthrow, thereby instituting the regime of the Shah. The coalescence of a number of events came about that allowed Ayatollah Komeini to move into a position of power and quickly sublimating a student revolt into an Islamic revolt. Initially students chose to invade the American Embassy with the expressed purpose of exposing the CIA’s actions in perpetrating a coup upon their then newly formed democracy. Unfortunately all the Americans had not left yet, hoping to shred all the information the students were seeking. Their detainment by the students became an international incident because of the Ayatollah’s quick consolidation of power, encapsulating the students revolt and rendering it meaningless. It is interesting that such an Islamic state can base their existence upon a student movement they so quickly discarded. That movement still exists today and is what gives American politicians hope that regime change can work in Iran. America’s politicians are wrong. The fact that a country could be so easily overcome by a few Islamic Imams means that Iran is no more ready for democracy than are Iraq or Pakistan.  The people (any people) have to overcome the hurtles, make the scary decisions and thrust themselves upon the sword of fortune for the sake of their goal.  In today's world, only those who die for a winning cause get statues.  But it's always the masses that raise them up. The Founding Fathers did not have quite the same problems at home as do these countries with thousands of years of cultural and societal historical precedence. In the first place, there was a loose association of individual colonies inhabited largely by people from similar backgrounds but of mostly different religious bents. The colonies themselves were payment from England’s monarch of the time for loyalty or promised riches or both. None of the ruling class was present in the colonies, only those people deputized by virtue of their affiliations or speculation of profit. I like to compare it to what WILL happen if humans go to Mars to live. Ultimately Earth will be of no consequence to the "Martians" and they will develop a system of government that fits their circumstance in their own timeframe.  The sheer expense of militarily enforcing Earth's rule will equate to King George's inability to send enough troops in a reasonable time to maintain the status quo.  And the best a foreign invader is going to get is to maintain the status quo, whatever that status may be.  The fact that this administration would like to explore and then establish a colony on Mars means that there will be a Martian Revolution and Earth will loose.  The fact is as plain as the nose on anyone's face.  But I digress. The Founding Fathers realized that they faced an imposed loyalty to an aristocracy across a vast ocean whose only desire was to have empire and extract taxes and riches from the New World. The fact that they could also send the least desirable across the ocean was not lost on them. Pennsylvania was established as a debtor’s colony. Enough said. Obviously the concept of loyalty to the Crown was enough to maintain the status quo for a generation or so, but ultimately families began to have history in the colonies and real ties to the network of communities. Travel between colonies was prevalent, familial relations established, and as such presented opportunities for people talking and expressing qualms about English rule to become widespread. After all, America in it’s colonial form was essentially self sustaining, protected not by the Crown but by the people, and in the end the idea of autonomy would not be held back. The only real positives in the establishment of America as a democracy were 1) having a basis in law of a level of democracy as defined in the Magna Carta, and 2) the desire to decide the fate of the colonies without what was then considered outside interference. A major problem with our history books is that they describe an environment where dissent against the Crown was prevalent amongst the population. Nothing could be further from the truth. The average person held no particular desire to fight for their freedom from the Crown during the years prior to the beginning of the American Revolution. In fact, at the beginning of the war Revolutionary forces were roughly equal to the minimal British garrisoned troops. Yet the ideas spread bolstered by the news of the struggle for American autonomy, and soon many came to support the effort. A hard fought war supported by France in a largely a monetary and passive assistance ended up giving the Founding Fathers a clean slate to work with in building the government of the United States of America. Democracy didn’t spring into existence, it was earned day by day for 13 years, specifying from the Declaration of Independence until final ratification of the new Constitution. Democracy was earned by the sweat and tears and blood and intellect of a people set in their resolve to establish a government where their voices would be heard. Had the colonists been of a more cohesive group either in religion or philosophy in the initial stages of establishing the colonies, the American Revolution may well have been postponed for another 50 years, if ever. However, the likelihood was pretty small because the newest generations of colonist had never really known England or truly been a part of a monarchy. Like the future Mars colonists will cut their ties with Earth, America cut it’s ties with England because an absentee landlord will never understand your problems and they still want the full rent. Even this may be fine, but once they do nothing to alleviate the problems and raise the rent, what can you expect? Iraq is currently under the domination of a landlord who keeps raising the rent without fixing any of the problems.  How not that the people descend to such a level each person could not reach alone?  How not that a 1500 year old war between Sunni and Shi'ite would erupt when no government was there to contain them?  Iraq may well earn it’s democracy if that is what the Iraqi people really want, but they will do it by expelling American troops from their soil so that they may make the decisions needed, not the hand picked American puppets. So if America really wants to spread democracy around the world then the government needs to learn the value of a people’s society and culture. The only thing that happens at the end of a gun is death, not democracy and certainly not freedom. It is not possible to kill enough Iraqi people to make them accept democracy, and those of other countries who have the power without democracy will never give it up to become democratic. 12:24:01 PM    comment []

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Quality of the American Presidency I often wonder how we’ve come so far from the spirit that still echoes across time when America stood for what was good about society. Not only about society, but for society. What happened to the time that an American President could approach the French President with evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba and the French President didn’t require proof? The word of Kennedy meant enough in the world for the world to believe him. The word of an American President was good enough for the world to believe him. Now it is tough to tell whether there is any truth in what our government says, not only to the world, but to our own people. I recall a conversation with my father a few years back and we were discussing the possibility of our government bugging the populace in unwarranted eavesdropping, and he was totally nonchalant about the prospect, saying that he had nothing to hide. He missed my point, as has a still significant portion of the American public who sit back complacently as this administration heaps one illegal act after another on the people. The point is really very simple. In a world where terrorists are such a small portion of the world’s population, it is counterintuitive to waste the resources both in people and in dollars to try to watch people who are no threat to national security. This includes anti-war organizations and other policy dissidents who were targeted not only by numerous Homeland Security departments, but infiltrated by the military all the way down to local police departments, who, btw, constantly agitated these peaceful dissidents toward illegal and dangerous actions. In today’s America our government is holding data mined since 9/11 to the tune of having a database of over 700,000 names of suspect individuals. Now knowing the inability of the government to actually institute a program that is extremely efficient, I am positive that somewhere around a 20% portion of those names are duplicates or slightly different spelling of names or have different addresses, etc. The real problem is that we now have evidence that it WAS NOT 9/11 that was the turning point where this administration instituted illegal wiretapping, but within the first month in office of George W. Bush. How people can continue to sit back while this new information confirms a truly dastardly change in ignoring the laws of America is beyond me. But if one steps back to 2001 pre 9/11, and tempers their current knowledge with the additional evidence of the administration’s desire to overthrow Iraq’s despotic dictator from day one, it is easy to see that the hidden agenda of eavesdropping on American citizens was a necessary precursor to this outrageous plot. And I call it a plot because too many factors of what occurred from the day George W. Bush was inaugurated until 9/11 itself fits the mold of a written presentation for global hegemony. Unsurprisingly virtually all of those who created this documentation became either high level Bush appointees delegated greatly exaggerated powers, or highly visible conservative media pundits who quickly sprang into action to support their ideals. How the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document plays into the actions of this administration during the early days prior to 9/11 is more peculiar than virtually any fiction novel written. One fact in evidence is Colin Powell’s statement in February of 2001, the same month the Bush administration requested the large telecomms provide customer records sans proper warrants, when the Secretary of State said emphatically that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed any weapons that would jeopardize our national security. Within days Condi Rice, then National Security Advisor, backed up Secretary Powell’s statement, again emphatically noting that Iraq did not present a problem to our national security. But now we know that the cadre known as the Neo-Cons already had Iraq in their sights in 1998 (well, now MORE people know but the information was there for the looking prior to 9/11), and lo and behold they had the power to initiate the overthrow of Saddam. Not only the power, but they thought they had the plan to overthrow Saddam. However, more reality creeps back into the picture when we look at the Neo-Con’s proposed deposing of Saddam and move back to Dick Cheney’s super secret Energy Commission meeting, comprised of major oil CEOs and power brokers such as the now deceased Ken Lay. From information leaked we know that this commission was already planning to divide up Iraq’s oil fields, garnering operating fields for the consumer industry and projected fields for the companies highly invested in oil exploration. So we only have a difference of a detailed and documented plan for regime change in Iraq in 1998, and a detailed breaking up of all Iraq’s oil resources in March of 2001. And in between we have the requested but unwarranted request for telecomms to provide subscriber information in the name of national security. The facts continue to build. President George W. Bush gave short shrift to any suggestions that terrorism was a threat to the United States. He and his cabinet gave no heed to outgoing President Clinton’s suggestion that terrorism was going to be the biggest threat to national security and Condi Rice only a month before 9/11 decided to pay any attention at all to both National Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke’s warnings. So in our rearview mirror we have a group of individuals who wished to remove Saddam Hussein and have just recently moved into positions of vastly inflated power, and we have the cohorts of the powerful planning dividing up the spoils of that removal. We also have a refusal of the administration to pay attention to heightened "chatter’ that suggested our counterterrorism people should at least have been paid heed. Now we jump back to December, 1998, I believe, when Donald Rumsfeld himself suggested that any acceptance of such actions as the PNAC document recommended, America "would have to suffer a catastrophe such as a new Pearl Harbor", Suddenly one looks at 9/11 in a new light. Had the administration placed the highest priority on pursuing the "chatter" on the terrorists, then perhaps 9/11 would not have been so traumatic. However, we have the Department of Defense filled with individuals whose very efforts towards regime change in Iraq included the true knowledge that America would need to have people die in order for the plan to be enacted. We also have to understand that many of the prime money movers for the Bush elections we also those included in the secretly held Energy Commission’s meeting. One question I have is whether Dick Cheney was playing the role of Vice President at this meeting, or in fact he held some type of defacto "CEO Emeritus" status for Haliburton. Certainly we know that Haliburton received the first open-ended NO BID contract directly prior to our invasion of Iraq. But I digress. So what we continue to see is that the time span between the publishing of the PNAC statement of policy through to 9/11 have implications that suggest something is wrong in the average American’s perception of events. We also continue to have new information that fills in the blanks this administration has been pleased that more attention was not placed on this string of events. The problem is that we see one thing of fact that most people simply do not wish to even contemplate, and that is too many events have coalesced into a comprehensive whole which follows exactly what appears to be a total plan initiated in the mid 90s. In fact, if one takes chaos theory to the extreme, even in the extreme it is highly improbable that these factors could fall together so neatly as to present a completed jigsaw puzzle of the timeline we now consider to be our own. To be honest no one could have predicted that George W. Bush WOULD be elected President, but it is hard to say that George W. Bush WAS elected. In fact, he was SELECTED by a partisan majority of the US Supreme Court. Considering the elevation of the Florida elections results to the US Supreme Court by the Bush election team can easily fall into the area of probability when extremes are the excepted range of values. Still, there are probabilities that couldn’t be expected in 1998 when PNAC presented their foreign policy document and 2000 when George W. Bush’s election would be tied up in court. But the show stopper is the plain and simple fact that virtually all of the PNAC players were placed in exactly the slots necessary for them to help ignore 9/11 intelligence. And this whilst immediately upon obtaining office preparing the military for the invasion of Iraq, and for the unwarranted wiretapping requested in February 2001. I actually had another subject in mind when I started this blog, but sometimes the facts just want to jump out and say "look at me you dumbass". And the facts won. In all of the possible outcomes based on chaos theory, there is no possible way that the period between 1998 and 9/11/2001 could have happened in just the way it did without concerted effort on the part of all the players to make it happen just the way it did. One may look at the facts and say this is a coincidence of epic proportion, but this is an unlikely set of circumstances which resembles a once in 500 year storm or drought. But we aren’t talking about 500 years, we are talking about something less than three years for all of these factors to come into play and then play out exactly the way they did. In chaos theory even this possibility exceeds any probability imaginable. Don’t get me wrong. An improbability does not imply an impossibility, but one doesn’t name a once in 500 year storm as such without knowledge of the factors that results in a once in 500 year storm. So there is no real good reason to accept that so many extraneous circumstances could come into play in just the right timeframe. And for anyone to think I’m suggesting a conspiracy of some sort, let us just look at that possibility. For plain simple luck to be implicit within all the possible permutations, the odds go towards a one in a million year storm. We’re talking about probabilities that would produce the big red storm on Jupiter, and there are obvious ramifications of such a collusion of factors causing that storm as well as a history of why that particular storm is still brewing. This particular storm coalesced in a period of three years, and required such a number of circumstances to be in place that coincidence no longer is even a consideration. Just such a impossible storm may well continue to brew in this country far after the "impossible storm" that allows for the (s)election of George W. Bush, pre 9/11 unwarranted eavesdropping, secret energy policy commissions, a plan for dividing the oil spoils of Iraq, ignoring imperative intelligence information that apparently led to 9/11 and the ultimate declaration of war on terrorism and subsequent invasion of Iraq. After all, the big red storm on Jupiter is at least 400 years old. Do you want America to follow the logical outcome? 3:10:27 PM    comment []

Monday, October 22, 2007

Today’s Topic: Why Isn’t This Administration Listening To The Iraqi Barham Salih, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, spoke at length today at the Brookings Institute about a number of issues as viewed by the Iraqi government. His talk included Federalism vs a Centralized Federal government and the need for accepting the need to sell the rights to their oil, as presented in one of the bills currently before the Iraqi parliament. Mostly we are talking about sharing resources in a Federalistic political environment as opposed to a Centralized Federal government which then CHOOSES who gets the income from Iraq’s resources. It’s a pretty easy choice. With Shia in the south and easy access to oil, and Sunni in central Iraq with no active oil resources the concept of a Centralized government primarily run by the 60% majority of Shia, then one can easily see a dichotomy building. When you throw in the Kurds, who also have productive oil wells in their areas of Iraq, the problems become exponential in determining the type of government Iraqis will ultimately accept. Since 90% of the argument is based on the 100% resource available to the Iraqi people, it makes sense that a true level of Federalism be allowed them in order to make decisions based on regional needs and productivity, not a Centralized government that can undoubtedly be able to fudge figures or slow down the process which ultimately will deny some level of monies or services. Even without a true civil war in our own midst, one can say that a large majority of Americans determined that New Orleans and other victims of Hurricane Katrina would be granted a large amount of money in order to rebuild their destroyed lives. But with a Centralized Federal Government, particularly one whose executors of law are of somewhat a slightly different bent than truly executing the law, one can see that in the aftermath of Katrina, once again large corporations received the benefits of the vast majority of the allocated monies whilst clearly 60% of displaced poor never received a penny to help them rebuild their lives. The problem here is that we are talking about something as simple as Americans who have been denied money to rebuild their lives because a Centralized Federal government chose to allocate the money based on their ideological precepts rather than the direct needs of the people. And the point here isn’t that a Centralized Federal government can’t work, but rather that once a single minded all encompassing train of thought takes over virtually all branches of government, the system automatically breaks down in its ability to respond to the needs of the people. America has many resources to call upon, not the least is the quality of its citizens, but still we have a serious problem in New Orleans, and we STILL have a serious problem in Iraq. The failures of this administration simply are the best example of how easy it is to scale failure both up and down the ladder of success. If nothing else than just the failures of this administration then still there is a bright light in the Presidency of George W. Bush. He has single-handedly shown that failure is scalable and thus is a bane to good government. On the other hand, success is also scalable, for every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So when we determine that failure is bad for everyone concerned, and then we add in the equation of balance, then success is the only option. Psychiatry defines "insane" as one performing the same actions over and over again expecting different results. You might have read me mentioning that a number of times before, but it is well worth repeating. Why? Because the concept of insanity goes directly along with the concept of success and failure. Any sane person wouldn’t throw money at a problem consistently when the results are the same every time. Conversely no one in their right mind would simply destroy a system that works well over an entire people in order to place into existence programs and processes which cause harm. Overall the results expose the fallacy. So why are Americans (and their Congressional representatives) complacent about wanting to get our troops out of Iraq by waiting to see if this president actually has any viable method of completing HIS mission? Because we are scared so silly as to actually become politically inactive and simply expect different results when previous results would proclaim us insane.  We have become the asylum whose inmates are now running the show. Senator Joe Biden brought forth a Senate resolution which essentially split Iraq up into three parts, each governed by their own majority religious or ethnic groups. It passed 75-0 and was immediately badmouthed by the executive branch via our grossly overlarge Embassy compound residents as being out of touch with what the Iraqi people want. Today Benham Salih told us differently.  He specifically said that the majority of Iraqis would prefer just such a government. You know, one that can control the resources that might educate their populace and provide for health care and in general uplift their people out of poverty.  How is it that he can have such a hope for Iraq when America shows more people in poverty than 7 years ago, and a preternaturaly insistence upon having American and British companies "partner" with the Iraqi people in oil exploration. Here’s the rub. This administration will not allow for the individual regions to be the beneficiaries of their resources because it wants Iraq to sign over a large amount of profit to American and British companies for the continued exploitation of Iraqi resources.  Now it is true that these companies would have to expend some serious money to find new resources in Iraq, but in the interim 30 years (the time frame in the law), they'd be pulling billions of gallons of gas and oil out of the Iraqi soil without any dollars invested in finding new resources.  Most of the profits from this "beneficial contract" would go to the major oil companies, not the Iraqi people. At the beginning of this year I wrote a blog about not profiting from conflict resources, which means adhering to the most strict interpretation of moral turpitude in order not to rape another country’s natural wealth at the expense of that country’s people. Profit doesn’t equate to all people profiting, and in historical fact, usually means that thousands or tens of thousands will die.  In Iraq this is already a fact and western oil companies haven't pulled barrel one out of the Iraqi sand. So I guess that this is the gist of what I’m talking about. If America, as a political entity, WILL NOT police international companies who have contracts with the American people, then our political entity is, AT LEAST, part of the problem. With the push of American power into all areas of the world, and our corporations globally expanding due to a century of direct policital and military intervention, then one could extrapolate that power, negates moral clarity, and showing that the United States of America is more than likely involved in one way or the other with some level of the strife of the entire world. For how is it that we would invade and depose Saddam Hussein and yet not leave, or that we would allow the destruction of New Orleans and turn around and give billions of dollars to contractors who haven’t provided the contracted services? If we can scale up our failures from New Orleans to Iraq and Afghanistan (although the time frames are different), then why can no one see that the scaling factors don’t stop there? People throughout the world hate us because of our policies and our failures. After all, with equal and opposite reactions, if America truly had a continually growing success in our endeavors, the failures would have just as incrementally decreased. If one wishes to predict what would happen if America again preemptively attacked Iran due to intelligence that can’t be trusted, then by extrapolating our successes and failures, one would have to suppose that the failure would be scaled just as severely as our previous failures.  Bombing Iran would incur war.  Make no mistake about it.  I've often heard the pundits talk about "well, we would be invading, we'd just be bombing".  That's essentially what the 9/11 terrorists did to us.  Kinda stirred up the hornet's nest here, don't you think? Perhaps its not just the idea of listening to the Iraqis about their future, but listening to Americans who want to have a say in our present, our foriegn policy, and our future. However, the real idea is that this country has become inured to failure. Our concept of existence as a country has failed us because our government has failed us and then spread this same failure over the world, with promises of doing the same for even more countries. Not a very bright prognosis, if you ask me. The cancer may not respond to anything but extremely invasive surgery. Perhaps it is time to cut the invasive ideology out so that the Constitution and the American people can breathe easily again. 2:18:22 PM    comment []

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Tolday’s Topic: Rudi And His Stupidity Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with Rudi Guiliani as a presidential hopeful, I just think he’s about as well qualified as John McCain, of whom I’ve written a previous blog about. Rudi’s only problem is that he’s started lying from the get go. Some greater than 1/3 number of tax cuts he says he initiated are state initiatives and thus aren’t his for which to garner the glory. Both the New York City Police and the Fire Departement New York unions categorically charge Mayor Guiliani as a liar, and the man had the intelligence to demand that the New York City Emergency Response Center be placed in Building 7 of the World Trade Center AFTER the 1993 attempt to take down the World Trade Center buildings. Not only is this specious in itself, but one has to wonder why over 8 hours later a steel based building would collapse when there was no major damage to the building due to the events of 9/11/01. Ah, but now I’m going to get into more specific territory and I’ll likely offend at least a few people. By Rudi’s actions at a fundraising function in New York City he dispelled Yassir Arafat from a performance to which Yassir was invited. The long chain of events since then to now have prompted Guiliani to say that "America is not a terrorist state" and it is to this specific statement I challenge Rudi to respond. Let’s see. How can I explain this to the average person? Should I start with the fact that Guiliani is a Catholic with three wives? No, I don’t believe that is pertinent. Should I start with his failures in providing for a demonstrably needed multi-force communications system? Nah, I’ll let the NY police and fire fighters do that. Can I point out that his encompassing of Israel as an ally is the reason to support Israel in its efforts against the Palestinians? Perhaps, but then I’d be required to say that the Israeli have never found it to their advantage to sign any treaty with the United States. In other words, Israel doesn’t want America’s help, and America isn’t required to help Israel in any of their military endeavors. Yet Rudi would appear to continue the abrasive actions of America against all of Israel’s enemies, without regard towards what the American people obviously want, and what would be the best for America. I find it interesting that most Democratic candidate frontrunners have offered up an assessment of the need for American troops in Iraq for the next 6 years. I also find it amazing that none of the Republican candidates have espoused any change in the level of troops or commitment of American tax dollars to a failed policy. Only one Republican has espoused the true republican ideal about how to handle Iraq deployment, and not one Democrat has actually come up with a solution that isn’t somewhat the same as the Republicans offer. So, as I’ve said before, there are no Republicans worth electing and of the Democrats Ron Paul is the best candidate. Now let me try to explain this before you get your panties in a bunch. Of the Republicans we have a plethora of "more of the same" with only slightly different ideologies, thus it would come down to the most charismatic. But of the Democrats, one has to realize that this administration has moved the political spectrum so far to the right that a moderate Republican becomes a Democrat. This pretty much puts Mike Gravel and Ron Paul on the same stage together, and the rest of the Democrats and Republicans can simply be ignored. The religious right has been exposed, the Republicans have shown they can’t be trusted, the Democrats have shown they have no backbone, and the only two realistically available candidates are Ron Paul and Mike Gravel. Unfortunately these are the BEST choices one has today. Both will do what they say. Both will stand for a large percentage of the people, and both will end the concept of pre-emptive war. Where is it in the Constitution that any President is required to protect the American people? How is it that the Commander-in-Chief has greater power than the President? Where is it stated in the Constitution that any branch of government holds sway over the others in some undefined dire circumstances? Let’s revisit this one more time. The President is elected by a consensus of the electorate of the "several states" which provides for a supposedly accurate representation of the popular vote of those same states (this was never a situation tested by law, but the idea was that each individual state would have others who would correct the record). However, no one votes for the Commander-in-Chief, which means that the title of Commander-in-Chief is exactly as described within Article 2 of the Constitution. There are no greater inherent powers of the Commander-in-Chief than those apportioned to the elected President, therefore there can be no greater leeway allowed to the President as Commander-in-Chief. He simply has the control of the military in times of war.  This concept was designed to dissallow the possibility of a military coup, plain and simple. And there is some serious thought needed to be given to when "times of war" equate to the Commander-in-Chief moniker come into play. Certainly they came into play when Al Qaeda crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, but I have to question as to whether any Congressional authorization was actually allowed to move the front line of defense against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the innocent people of Iraq.  When the "Commander-in-Chief" decides to move the war then he outstrips his authority as the President of the United States.  But Bush simply lost the true war in order to create a war of choice with Iraq. This president lost me somewhere along that line of logic. America had been within one month’s time of defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then we’d only had one country to rebuild. The true test of real Democracy lay in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Ah, you say, but Afghanistan didn’t have any oil so why fight over a country without resources to which we could lay claim. Well, actually there are billions of dollars of resources in Afghanistan that we have no clue as to whether are being exploited by American companies. The resource is opium. Let me lay it out to you. In Viet Nam somewhere between 70 to 85% of all of our covert operations were provided for by Golden Triangle opium. Air America supplied the transports, the generals of South Viet Nam made tons of money, and the CIA shared in the income, thus allowing them to continue to provide their clandestine services without oversight from Congress because there were no requested funds. George H. W. Bush learned his lessons well during his CIA directorship, and turned these same lessons toward developing the Reagan administration’s support of dictators in South and Central America, resulting in tens of thousands of innocent people’s deaths, all for political ideology. We also used the lessons of illegal drug trade for covert operations from Viet Nam, thus importing tons of US authorized Cocaine into the ghettos of America whilst having Congress apply laws that suggested blacks with "crack" cocaine should receive sentences that required ten times the amount of powdered cocaine for whites. So when Rudi Guilaini suggests that America is not a terrorist state, I have to wonder just how much history he has studied. Apparently America is complicit, at the least, in tens of thousands of deaths just in the drug wars, much less when we factor in the demands of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, USAID, and the International Monetary Fund. When you add on the Reagan Central American Wars of the ‘80s, we have to wonder again whether anyone is actually presenting the American ideal to the world. One would think, with all the information that has come out prior to Georgie boy deciding to re-classify decades of information, that somehow we must be complicit in some levels of terrorism. The available information doesn’t allow for any other interpretation. And the information begs the question, just who are the terrorists here? The answer should be clear. 3:27:01 PM    comment []

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Final Flaws of American Democracy When Under Stress Actually, I should say the final flaws of what democracy allows in the name of the people when under stress. The concepts of the working government were defined in the Constitution and have never been so abjectly changed as to mean something else in the ensuing years of the Bush Presidency. But the perception of the concept of democracy has crashed around our feet and become the muck that all Americans must forge through in order to regain the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE CONSTITUTION, which are the rights ascribed to the people in the Bill of Rights. I’ve often talked about the knee-jerk reactions of Congress to daily events that produce ridiculous laws such as the car jacking law. Why was there a necessity to have another law describing principally what had started as a horse thieving law? We have had laws on the books about stealing another person’s property and another person’s transportation for over 100 years. And they weren’t even federal laws. Why was it necessary for Congress to react with new federal law that essentially duplicated law already in place at the state level? Primarily it is because Congress has become a reactionary legislative body, which doesn’t hold the primacy of the Bill of Rights as the guiding issue on how to legislate for the people. Congress has primarily become a legislative branch under the executive branch, regardless of what Senator Arlen Spector and others may proclaim. Congressional disapproval in the nation today shadows presidential and vice-presidential disapproval simply because, even with a Democratic majority, they have become unable to protect the people. Protect them from what, one might ask. Well, how about a rogue government of secrecy and hidden agendas. A government who’s very soul exists in presidential findings, secret detention centers employing torture, and a government who would rather spend the national treasure on a war of choice instead of keeping good Americans healthy. A government who has moved the entire idea of the people having recourse against their government for grievances to courts who accept the concept of executive privilege, corporate rights and national security. A government who roams the world kidnapping and imprisoning anyone they, whether the correct person or not, want without concern for accountability. During the cold war the American public was continually bombarded with the sanctity of the American way by means of holding the Soviet Union up as the greatest plight to the world’s freedom. Yet since the cold war desolved into chaos apparently unpredictable to our CIA, this nation has moved towards finding some other necessary evil to fight in order to continue the military-industrial chokehold on the nation’s treasure. However, it doesn’t stop there. We have a full out assault by the religious right who desire to break down the walls of separation between church and state established by the Constitution and apply their own ideals and morals to the entirety of the population even though they represent only a fraction of that population. Normally that wouldn’t even be a problem, but when those elected have too many of the religious right in the pockets, as did many a previous congressman and senator during the last Congress, then we start having problems again with knee-jerk reactions such as the forced effort of the federal legislature to interfere in the Terry Schiavo situation. When should the federal legislative branch become so consumed with self-righteous aggrandizement that they should be allowed to interfere with the life of a specific American? And I mean in any matter? There is nothing in the Constitution that suggests that federal legislators may interfere with a specific individual, and in fact the Constitution gives the individual rights over the government, not vice versa. And herein lies the problem. For the past six years this republican monopolized government has run ransack over the people time and time again. They quailed the Democrats into believing that they’d never have to opportunity of actually running the legislature. If one can try to argue that this is not the case, then why hasn’t there been any Impeachment proceedings for a President and Vice-President who lied to the people of America and indeed to the world in order to break one of the truest American principles of not being the aggressor in a war of choice? But rather than continue to harp on "old news" as the Bushies like to say, let us consider some of the newer evidence in the mismanagement and abuse of the American Constitution and subsequent laws. I’d like to talk about national security. The concept being thrown about is that this administration knows what it is doing and either will not or cannot answer to any questioning of their means and methods due to national security issues. This is patently false. Never during a time of war has this country’s strengths been more trivialized than under this president. Congress has only been a rubber stamp and, in violation of law, each and every portion of the executive branch has been politicized. Professional bureaucrats have been relegated to placeholders as "free market" contractors have delved deep into the pockets of America’s treasury often without being able to actually produced the products for which they were contracted. Whistleblowers have no recourse in law even though the laws still stand, and the higher courts have been so packed with Bush appointees that legitimate legal recourse is no longer allowed it’s day in those courts. One wonders just how secure a nation can be when those of it’s own executive branch can proclaim to the world that Valerie Plame is a CIA agent working in the area of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons even as we are trying to negotiate with North Korea about their nuclear weapons. One also wonders just how secure a nation can be when the Office of the Vice-President keeps jumping around from the Executive to the Legislative Branch when it suit its purposes. By trying to blur the lines of power, the lines dividing the American people from their government has been amplified. Equal and opposite reaction. Are the American people just sheep to unfalteringly follow in the path dictated by the administration, or are the American people the final arbitration when it comes to the power of the president? And is Congress the true representational force that follows the will of the people or just another politicized branch of government gleefully rubberstamping the president’s wildly sweeping demands? It is easy to wonder when the 2006 elections spoke loudly about America’s will to end the war by electing Democrats who espoused an end to the war, particularly when President Bush offers a deaf ear to the resounding noise of an offended populace. So how can this administration declare that we are safer when they in fact have brought our level of national security down to the outing of a CIA agent and the negation of an entire country’s legal vote for change? We are not suffering from some type of war fatigue or news fatigue or even terror alert fatigue. We, the people of America, are suffering from the loss of our ability to control our government. Our government is making terrorists who will gladly kill any American on a daily basis. Our government is walking all over the Constitution on a minute by minute basis and they have tons of willing legal types who will gladly try to foist new interpretations of 60 year old laws on such subjects as torture and habeas corpus, neither caring whether American citizens are caught up within the lies they spread, nor how it turns out in the end. Our Supreme Court has been stacked since Ronald Reagan with strict "constructionists" who claim to believe in the original intent of the Constitution. The question begged in this instance is why they would be considered "constructionists" unless they were constructing something, like a new Constitution without benefit of Constitutional Amendment as required under law. The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer protecting the environment but rather those who pollute the environment, i.e. big business. The National Labor Relations Board, a stronghold of New Deal concern for the working class of middle income wage earners is now a bastion of corporate enablers with direct access to the ear of the President. The Justice Department no longer dispenses justice in any way shape or form. Instead it brings charges against the people and interferes with the people’s ability to "redress the government" as was defined in the 1st Amendment. All of the above end up lessening the strength of the American people’s government and directly affects national security. But there is more. The concept of such large scale contracting out what have typically been professional government bureaucrats jobs to private industry has caused a number of problems. Primary has been the inability of private contractors to establish any ability to provide for contract accountability. Secondarily, the contractors don’t know squat about how the bureaucrats do the job of government, so there is a learning curve even as they are trying to influence the direction of government programs. Free market contracting apparently is not policing itself, so the sum cost to government has become astronomical without any reasonable accountability nor recourse for retrieval of overcharged monies. Companies who contract for government development programs aren’t even able to complete a product and yet not only get paid for their failure, they get follow-on contracts for more work that isn’t likely to produce a product. This administration is supporting the concept of failure through its endeavors to prove that free market enterprise can provide productivity and realize goals by paying these same contractors for their failure. And not only does this hold true in national security databases and such, but it holds true in virtually all aspects of contracting in supporting our men and women in Iraq. When America pays for tainted water transports, over-billing for gas, R&R facilities who over-count their clientele 12 times a day, construction that has failed inspections, if any, in the first year, pipeline reconstruction to the tune of $75 million without one bit of reconstruction taking place, it is almost too much for the average American to take in. The failures of this administration are ten fold greater than their failure in responding to American citizens’ needs in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Funny how Mississippi faired pretty well as a Republican Governor (Haley Barber) was in power. And even with what we do know the larger question is begged about what we don’t know. During all this contracting and multiple levels of subcontracting are we enabling the same ideological group of fanatical fundamentalists to infiltrate our ranks? How would we know? How well are the third or fourth levels down subcontractors vetting their employees? And how can we verify that vetting? Will any of these contractor employees become "most favored" to gain entrance to our country as potential citizens? So here’s the real question. Just how much war profiteering is happening and how fundamentally does it negate our ability to maintain national security? You see, there’s one program I’ve talked about previously, which is the Terrorist Awareness Database, which was previously the Admiral Poindexter project called the Total Awareness Database. The latter was designed to infiltrate all aspects of information regardless from where the data was pulled from. The name didn’t go over well with Congress, nor did the inclusion of a Reagan era convicted national security advisor, so Poindexter was out and the name of the database changed. But the design of the database was never changed. To date this program is only marginally operational, thus President Bush had to resort to much more extensive and politically damaging efforts such as widespread illegal wiretapping. But it isn’t the TAD that is the problem because the intricacies are a little too hard for the idiots hired to do the job. Rather, it is the fact that with this database’s inclusions of some half a million Americans, the FBI has had to spent an inordinate amount of time trying to determine whether said Americans were involved with the terrorists or not. Any database person will tell you that 500,000 individual records without proper cross-referencing and appropriate flags will never give a tenable result in a database query. So has our national security been enhanced by all these programs of which have never provided any real fruit? Not likely. Are the people working on these highly sensitive products fully vetted so that our national security requirements are fulfilled? Again, not likely. So how is it that the American people are having their freedoms stepped on and our corporations can take advantage of an idiot C student from Yale who hasn’t once run a prosperous company? National security claims don’t start at the courts. They end there. Each level of courts in the system provide for in camera meetings in the judge’s chambers for each side to present evidence which cannot go outside of the chambers unless found to be relevant to the defendant’s case. Such provides for the judiciary to weigh the evidence for inclusion or exclusion of a court case. National security claims do not alleviate the courts from such fact finding nor of the public dissemination of such facts if found to be pertinent to the defendant’s case. To date, no higher court has engaged in such fact finding. Once the claim of national security has been made, the majority have simply rolled over and acquiesced. Fact-finding doesn’t require only the knowledge of the particular case, but indeed can include facts known to the public. Once the public knows a fact it can no longer be a national security concern. This is why a free press has been so instrumental in helping to maintain a free people and it is the reason people should pay attention to the free press. When the possible sum of $50 billion has gone to war profiteering and a President can ignore 275,000,000 people, then national security is already under assault. 12:57:21 PM    comment []

Friday, September 28, 2007

Today’s Topic: Stop Trying to Scare us. We Are Americans And Aren’t Afraid I’m more than sick and tired of the use of fear to intimidate the American people into supporting the brute force changes this administration has foisted upon us. Americans are Americans and as such are guaranteed their rights to the thoughts in their heads and the thoughts they speak. There are no less true patriots in America unless they truly be traitors in the Constitutional definition. The definition of insane is continuing to take the same actions expecting a different result. The definition shows a refinement of thought that cannot be overcome because the person having those thoughts cannot realize the futility of accomplishing their goals using the same actions. Well, apparently only human beings can be insane because I’ve never seen a cow or a dog or a rabbit do the same thing over and over again and yet expecting to achieve the original goal. It only took my Australian Cattle Dog, Freckles, one time of trying to jump over a fence she knew she should have been able to jump after she had failed the first time and hurt herself. There were parameters present she had not taken into consideration the first time, but she learned on the first effort. If you extrapolate the experience of continued failure and place the same onus on this president then you’ll easily see that my 5 year old dog is far smarter. Even further removed but still within the list of people receiving republican talking points are those idiots such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. The problem with both of the above is that they appear to declare the right to judge people without concern to whether their previous judgements were proven or not. Most times the judgements were far off base and yet their continued support by the religious right is unabashed. Bill Maher said on a recent airing of Real Time "don’t you have to be right once in a while before you start calling people names?" Considering that this administration has failed miserably even in representing their religious right’s agenda, then one would have to say that the administration should probably shut its mouth. Please don’t let me hear another republican based diatribe about how the 80% of Americans who support ending the war and bringing our troops home healthy and unscathed as possible are Un-Patriotic. It’s not possible. By virtue of simple math and chaos principle it is far more likely that President Bush is sitting in the Oval Office dripping a drop of water on his hand expecting that drop to follow the path of the last drop. Apparently most of America realizes that each drop will go the way it goes, not the way one would wish. And as my father used to tell me, you can shit in one hand and wish in the other. You don’t even have to wonder which hand will be full first. But what I’m particularly mad at is that somehow the concept of the President protecting the Constitution of the United States has turned around to mean that the President must protect the people of the United States. Well, the heck with that. I’m willing to have my rights intact and have the possibility that I may be within the next group of people attacked. And yes, that includes my wife and my children if that need be. At least that way I know I/we have died leaving something tangible of the freedoms 230 years of Americans have fought for. Otherwise, my death and the deaths of my family and those brothers in combat would truly have been lost in vain. There is no victory in supplying Iraq with democracy when our own Constitution is laid to waste. The concept of patriotism cannot come down to only supporting one side because the gentlemen who wrote the Constitution didn’t even have one single purpose. But single purpose is the design of the Republican Party and its current executive branch administrator, George W. Bush. And the rhetoric is continually based on fear. Oh, not their fear. The fear represented here is the fear of the American people is that we will be attacked again and good Americans will die. Given the situation based on the circumstances of this administration, I’d have to predict that indeed, more Americans would die. We can almost predict how many Americans will die in the next 5 years that both parties’ presidential candidates have been talking about. We’ll see about 50 to 60 American soldiers per month die in Iraq over the next year. This will happen simply because we are there. Both sides of the aisle are preparing us for at least another 3,000 dead American troops, and certainly another 20,000 wounded. If extrapolated for the Iraqi, then we can expect to see up to another 1 million dead innocent civilians. We can expect to see another 2 million refugees draining the resources of their neighboring countries, and we can expect to see another Diaspora such as the Palestinians have been forced to suffer since 1948 and the establishment of a reconstituted Israel. And yet Americans seem to be totally fine with the numbers I’ve estimated because they don’t want to be considered unpatriotic. Well, I find them unpatriotic because they won’t stand up for their beliefs in the numbers the polls represent. I, in fact, find them wanting not in their desire to be patriots, but in the ability to accept the fact that being a patriot doesn’t mean you come out alive. There is no guarantee there. There is only the guarantee that you will have been able to hold your head high knowing in your heart that you are a true patriot because you didn’t allow events to occur in your name without your approval. I live about 3 miles from DC. I live on the upper area that was previously used for the Washington intelligentsia to summer because it is greater in height than the swamps of which DC was cut. But I’m about 7 miles as the crow flies from the center of DC and both my wife and I decided that as much as DC would be a target for a nuclear bomb from terrorists, we were not going to allow the terrorists to determine where we live. And just as importantly, we are not going to allow this administration to try to place the fear of God in our hearts because of the bullshit. Rather, we will continue to show our patriotism in defying this administration’s lies and ruses. All of us will die. That is a fact of the universe. If you allow your freedoms to be vacated because you might die even just a day earlier than you could have died, you have bequeathed to your children and our nation a legacy of intimidation by people no more able to determine the future than you. For you see, it is the Constitution that requires patriotism. This president, that president, it doesn’t make a whit of difference as long as you continue to support the Constitution and help maintain the document that made this country unique in the world. Let’s face it. It is far more important for you to be a patriot because you support the Constitution (as is the oath sworn of the President of the United States) than to be worried that someone might deem you unpatriotic if you don’t follow those making the loudest protestations. If you happen to believe that the current situation is truly in support of the Constitution then you are a patriot, even if you disagree with me. But if you choose to try to rally the American people through fear in order to maintain the status quo, you are the traitors to the spirit of the Constitution and thus to the rest of the American people. 2:13:30 PM    comment []

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Consequences of War (Reprise) Yesterday I was as appalled at General Patraeus’ testimony as Ray McGovern was that this same General was testifying before Congress without having been sworn in. Well, I thought, he got the chance to bring fudge on the circumstances and we’ll get him tomorrow when he’s sworn in. I was not prepared for the admission of the most senior of military commanders in Iraq that ensued. To have heard the four star General admit that he hadn’t sat down and tried to get his head around the concept of his troops laying down their lives without knowledge that they would be sacrificing those lives for the protection of America shows just how badly George W. Bush has abused the military. From former Chief of Staff General Shenseki to yesterday’s admission by General Patraeus, this war has been solely the folly of George W. Bush and those officers willing to follow a path to hell for their troops. I can’t even imagine what Colonel Hackworth would be saying if he were still alive. Then again, I think I can. He would be livid. Even were he not riddled with cancer at the end of his life he would have been spitting blood. This war is an abomination of all things American and even the best of those left cannot find a good reason to be in the situation that they find themselves. The whole situation makes me wonder whether General Patraeus simply went along with Georgie boy’s agenda to get that fourth star for retirement. Then again, I don’t really think that General Patraeus was trying to submarine the average GI Joe on the streets of Iraq. I think what he was doing was suggesting to the American public that if they didn’t like the outcome even whilst he was doing his duty, then there only lay one obstacle in the path to getting our boys and girls home safe and sound, and that person is George W. Bush. The facts are clear. From the announcement that George W. Bush will embrace General Patraeus’ recommendation that 30,000 troops be pulled from Iraq by next spring or so, we already understand that this administration thinks it can still lie to us as if those 30,000 weren’t the ones sent in for the surge. It brings to mind the released information that one of the aircraft carrier fleets was going to return whilst a replacement was sent. Then we got the information that another fleet was being sent, but as far as I can see no news has yet been forthcoming about the original aircraft carrier fleet returning to home shores. This means that there are 3 aircraft carrier fleets along with minesweepers and numerous other boats in the theater of engagement primarily to attack Iran. Remember, without verification this administration remains suspect and I have not seen one iota of news of the return of a carrier group. One carrier group comprises some 15,000 sailors and Marines, along with enough tonnage of destructive bombs and cruise missiles to eradicate an entire city in only minutes. Because of the sensitivity of our submarine fleet we have no idea of how many nuclear submarines are supporting this flotilla. Be it one or five, the armaments at their disposal is devastating. Coupled with at least 2 carrier groups the devastation becomes beyond ridiculous. So one only has to assume that General Patraeus is privy to plans more encompassing than this administration wishes to become public, or he is the worst General in the history of the American military service. The concept of having knowledge of bigger plans does not conflict with his appraisal of the military buildup in Iraq, to which he has "testified". In fact, it is an ingenious ploy to draw blame upon himself when much bigger actions may well come into play. Think about it. The consummate act of a republican is to have someone looking at your left hand whilst your right hand is quietly getting into position to strike. An admission of ignorance towards whether America is safer because of his actions decries the man’s experience and forethought. If this general didn’t have knowledge that something bigger was coming then he’d have been able to say that America was safer. So now, after all this thought, I’m even more concerned that this president will become even stupider than he appears to be, and we will quickly be talking about military strikes on up to 1600 targets inside of Iran, which will inflame the world. I dare say it will inflame me. To bastardize the services of my father and his brothers and my service to this nation is more than I might be able to accept. If Bush follows the folly I believe he will, then Thomas Jefferson was correct when he said that the government needed to be change every once in a while, by force if necessary. Does this mean that I want to cause harm to George W. Bush? No, it means that I want him behind bars dictated by the War Crimes division of the International Court. I want him in the same cell Slobodan Milosevic served time in. I want him disgraced because his policies and actions have disgraced America and put a decided smell on democracy around the world.. And oh, I want his daddy to publically disown him. 2:13:06 PM    comment []

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Today’s Topic: Even Presidential History isn’t Safe with this Administration After reading about halfway through Nathaniel Blumberg’s novel "The Afternoon of March 30", I decided today to look up some information about other presidential assassinations and attempts. While the concept of "lone assassin" permeates the history of America, one has to wonder just how this administration would help to continue the spin. So I took a look at the White House Website and its depiction of history and have come up with just a few things I question, not the least that ALL presidential assassinations have been a coup perpetrated upon the government and people of America. First, on assassination of William McKinley, a Republican, this paragraph ends the "official" biography. "His second term, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later. " In terms of an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan mere months after being inaugurated, only this small segment is presented. "On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused his popularity to soar. " Additionally, this little line about his election was strategically inserted. "Reagan won 489 electoral votes to 49 for President Jimmy Carter." But here’s where the selective memory, or the revision of history, becomes highly suspicious. Reagan won by a landslide of electoral votes when a democrat, John F. Kennedy, assassinated on November 22, 1963, earned this small insert of the administration’s appraisal. "Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President." The passage about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is simple and straightforward. "On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died. " The problem with Lincoln’s assassination is that it is represented as just another deranged assassin when history tells us that four of Booth’s conspirators were hung, including Mary Surratt, the leaseholder of a tavern used for conspiratorial meetings. Others were given life sentences by military tribunal except for a Ford’s theater stagehand who helped Booth escape and only received a 6 year sentence. My point is what we have been taught over the 220 years of America’s existence is being modified, and has been modified over the centuries. Perhaps the "who somehow thought he was helping the South" passage is the sum total of a real conspiracy to assassinate a sitting republican president. History has leaked out because of the individuals present during these history-making times have told us about them. But the official version from the White House is that only John Wilkes Booth was the assassin, without concern for the prevailing facts of a real conspiracy. In fact there is circumstantial evidence of Vice Presidential involvement on the part of Andrew Johnson. At the least Mary Todd Lincoln wrote this paragraph in a letter of March 15, 1866 to her friend Sally Orne. "...that, that miserable inebriate Johnson, had cognizance of my husband's death - Why, was that card of Booth's, found in his box, some acquaintance certainly existed - I have been deeply impressed, with the harrowing thought, that he, had an understanding with the conspirators & they knew their man... As sure, as you & I live, Johnson, had some hand, in all this..." Certainly this is not any real "smoking gun" evidence of a "grand" conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln, but in today’s world guilt by association is given far more credence than perhaps is due. Surely history is more solid than what is presented on the White House Website? And, of course, all that I’ve included simply isn’t just about assassinations or attempts, but shows a political bent towards describing history. For how is it that the electoral votes for Reagan make so much difference when Kennedy’s victory in 1960 is described as a "narrow margin of the popular vote" supposedly equates to Electoral College votes? In truth, Kennedy garnered 303 electoral votes to Nixon’s 219. These are very slight revisions in just the first five entries I researched of the official presidential biographies. But revisions don’t add up to the omissions. By simply changing a few lines in each of these few presidential biographies I’ve read, history appears to have been altered on a much larger scale. And my gut feeling is that these alterations are politically motivated. When people visit the White House Website one supposes that they will be getting the truth. When the truth expressed is motivated by political manipulation, then truth no longer exists. With Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over the politicization of the Executive branch’s institutions, perhaps we should have a document expert research whether the Constitution we view today is the one signed by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Certainly we know that bills up for vote have been substituted in the middle of the night with wording more favorable to this administration, such as the Patriot Act. We also know that, in violation of law, this administration has perpetuated a longstanding ruse upon the American public by utilizing a vast paid propaganda machine, the likes of which has not been seen since the Third Reich. The tendrils seemingly reach into all the aspects of our sacred institutions of government. And perhaps a true historian should peruse the White House Website to see just how far this politicization has gone. For if just the basic information on the history of the Presidency is suspect, then all the information out of this administration is suspect. Remember, a person who will lie for his country will lie to his country. Is there truly any American who doesn’t finally understand all of this? 11:46:45 AM    comment []

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Today’s Topic: Freedom is Worth Dying For This administration’s lawyers are arguing cases across America demanding that national security will be damaged by law suits being allowed to continue. The administration’s puppet appointees, all dancing on the same apparent string, are talking about Americans dying because of information becoming common knowledge but which they don’t want becoming common knowledge. National security will not be damaged by information getting out about how an inept and dissembling administration has infringed upon the rights of millions of Americans. Americans, however, may well die by some types of information becoming common knowledge and this is the price that any American may well pay for being a free and true American. A true American realizes that the piece of paper upon which the Declaration of Independence was written symbolizes the ideas of a people desiring to be free. A true American realizes that the pieces of paper upon which the Constitution of the United States of America was written defines the function and process of government. A true American realizes that the addition of the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution define what the government may not do to its citizens. Thus, in turn, the Bill of Rights was essentially establishing a method for the people to continue to define the rights of the people and place limitations on what actions the government may commit in the people’s name. These three documents, so hailed throughout the free world as the one true aspiration of a brand new country to garner freedom for its people, are just the same ideals that hundreds of thousands have freely given their lives to support and uphold. However, we currently have some 3700+ dead American soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for their country when their country wasn’t straight up with for which they would be dying. We have 58,000+ dead American soldiers from another war where their country wasn’t straight up with them. And these same administrations were not straight up with the American people, who let and often encouraged their children, husbands, fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters and sisters to go fight for the lies. Don’t blame me for making a comparison between Iraq and Viet Nam. The President did it himself in a total flip-flop from his previous denigration of anyone wanting to make that same comparison. I believe it was in the Rose Garden where he spoke of a reporter’s children being in danger when such comparison was made. He said it not once, but emphasized it at least 3 times more with different reporters. To me it sounded more like a threat than a prediction of terrorist activity. Let me be clear about this so as to head off any ambiguity. This administration’s war on terror is a farce and the war we are fighting in Iraq is for reasons not given. Ever. The reason is that you cannot fight a concept such as terrorism with men and weapons. You can kill a terrorist, but you cannot ever kill terrorism. Once the lid is off the can of worms, the worms will escape. In fact, even this country used terrorism one hundred and fifty years ago when we gave the native Americans blankets from the hospitals of the dead from smallpox.  Even further back, during the plague outbreak in Europe, invading forces would catapalt plague victims over the walls to infect the people within the fortresses. Terrorism has been around a long, long time and nothing George W. Bush says is going to change that.  The fact is that the term "hearts and minds" comes from the concept of terrorism, for terrorism is the method to destroy the hearts and minds of the people terrorism is being perpetrated against.  Winning the hearts and minds is a far harder job to do, and it has to be persued with such a ferocity and equal handedness that terrorism doesn't have a place to stand. All of the misdirection that has been the sum total of justification for this illegal war in Iraq is just that, misdirection. The American public does not know why we are in Iraq, and they probably never will if they don’t stand up for the documents that created America instead of standing up for some person who thinks George W. Bush and the President are the same thing. You see, the President is a position listed in the Constitution, with its appropriate place and duties and powers. George W. Bush is just a man. True, a man legally sworn into the position of President by the Chief Justice of the United States, but just a man in the long run. The concept of the position of President is a person whose face represents the will of the American people to the world. When the will of the people and the face of that representation are in conflict, the people have the right to demand action to terminate that person’s representation of America’s people to the world. It is unprecedented in American history for a President to make a bald face proclamation that his policy is America’s policy regardless of what the greater than "super" majority of the American people want. This is exactly what George W. Bush told the people when he said it didn’t make any difference if only Laura and Barney supported him. He had decided and his decision would stand. This is utter bullshit and the very reason that Congress was given the power to kick a President out of office. Least anyone may want to forget, the Republicans were so against the positive programs instituted by Bill Clinton that they immediately began investigations trying to tie him up in a defensive position and even tried impeachment. They tried impeachment even when they knew that the American people did not want Bill Clinton impeached. Now the Democrats are in power in both Houses and can’t come to the ultimate and moral conclusion that virtually everything George W. Bush has done in office leads to a "pattern of practice" which demands impeachment. For indeed we have proof of high crimes and misdemeanors. The clemency requested in the Military Commissions Act for any intelligence agents of the state, regardless of their actions indicates guilt on numerous levels. For there is no requirement for advanced clemency if laws are not being broken. Bush’s demand for a new law protecting the Telecomm industry from lawsuits for their complicity in his illegal surveillance indicates guilt on the part of the industry and the intelligence community. Again, there is no requirement for advanced clemency if laws are not being broken. My question is how can the government ask for laws specifying clemency for acts not committed if these acts aren’t being committed? After all, we have the promise from the President and the Vice President that there are no violations of laws, and yet laws get changed to allow the same actions they protest do not take place. For if bad men can break good laws, then where does that leave bad men who need not obey any law? The circular argument itself indicates that not only have laws been broken but that they will continue to be broken whether or not "clemency" laws are passed. Why? Because George W. Bush sees himself as something other than the President of the United States whose duties were defined in the Constitution. Perhaps he deems himself God’s sword in the face of the unrighteous? George W. Bush has tried to make himself above the law whilst degrading the concept of the President of the United States throughout the world. And he’s had plenty of help from Richard Cheney as Vice President, whose position as a placeholder and President of the Senate are his only defined duties. Obviously Mr. Cheney has far outstripped the original meaning of the Founding Fathers. Unfortunately it appears that George W. Bush thinks he is the American people’s hero and protector. No, let me amend that. Unfortunately George W. Bush STILL thinks he is the American people’s hero and protector, even though he hasn’t shown one iota of obtaining such lofty goals throughout his entire life. Now it is true that some men rise to the occasion and become something far greater than any previous experience in their lives might have suggested, but this has not happened to George W. Bush. A true-life hero who actually fought a war and protected his men was Audie Murphy (amongst so many of whom George Bush cannot measure himself). George W. Bush couldn’t muster enough guts to actually even attend to his Air National Guard commitment, much less actually become the hero of the "Homeland". And if George W. Bush is really depending on the axiom that "winners write the history", Georgie boy is out of luck again. Tim Robbins said something on Bill Maher’s Real Time that I’ve aid for along time now. And that is if one can say that this administration made the mistake of attacking Iraq due to inaccurate intelligence rather a wanton act of aggression, then we’re talking about way too much fuck-up for the American people to accept. A list of fuck-ups would not be on the resume of the American Hero. And no American Hero would endanger the rights of the people in order to save the people. I’ve said it before and yet I’ll say it again. The oath of the President of the United States does not have one thing in it that suggests the President has a responsibility for saving the lives of the American people. No, rather the oath specifically says that the President vows to defend the Constitution of the United States. One cannot defend the Constitution if one is trying to kill the Constitution and steal the freedoms of the American people. Now some might say that the Executive branch needs the additional power to fight the war on terror, and to that I’d have to say that any war is taken into consideration under the Constitution. But when we have the evidence that this administration considers itself above the law of the nation, and yes, of the world by virtue of the treaties we’ve signed, then we are already starting with an administration that is thumbing their collective noses at all they swore to uphold. Six plus years later we have all the proof we need to say that this administration is an American political abomination. And historically we have all the proof necessary as to how dear we hold our freedoms. The proof is in the math and the math says the difference is how many of the millions of Americans have fought and of those who have died protecting the Constitution as to how many deaths this administration is willing to foist both on the innocent Iraqi and our brave troops. And sadly in the number of rights this administration is willing to trounce in order to preserve their secrecy and possible greatness in American history. If there were one iota of reason to be in Iraq then the majority of Americans would still support the war effort. But the fact is that we are not at war with anything in Iraq. There are no Iraqi troops nor central command, nor even an acknowledged leader. The United States is an invader with only the intent of an invader holding an occupied country. We ousted the evil tyrant and disbanded his armies. Regardless of the hype and the numerous reasons given to cover our invasion, the United States is only in Iraq for her riches of oil resources. This is plain and simple. The problems have arisen from this administration thinking they could simply install a puppet government of some type of new and heretofore unknown democratic values and walk away with all the documents signed so that Shell, ExxonMobil and Phillips/Conoco could waltz in and have control of the oil for at least 30 years. In fact, if the Iraqi parliament had already approved the oil law Bush would have immediately declared victory and brought our valiant troops home. Surprisingly, however, we still have the fight of our lives ahead of us. This administration’s goals and ideals are being transferred to the newest batch of Republican presidential candidates, all speaking the same words and making the same frightening claims of fighting terrorism in a country where that terrorism was created by our actions and our presence least they follow us home when we leave. At least three of them admit to not even believing in the physical sciences that support evolution.  One wonders what other sciences these people reject out of hand. And so you see, our enemy is not only Bin Laden and his minions, but our own policies and actions which adversely affect freedom and democracy throughout the world. I guess I should distinguish Senator Ron Paul as being the one different Republican, but I’d rather point out that the Republicans don’t have a decent candidate and the best Democrat candidate is Ron Paul. For if this country truly wants a republic based upon democratic goals, then neither party is offering up the level of leadership this country needs to come back from the edge of the abyss. As good as Ron Paul seems, and as well as he appears to understand the true problems associated with America sticking our collective noses in everyone else’s business, his solutions are specifically Libertarian and that could turn into isolationism. Don’t get me wrong. As much as I’ve been on the apparent liberal side during this administration’s misuse and abuse of powers, you have to remember one thing. I said before that this administration had taken everything so far to the right as to make the center farther right. This has been born out by Hillary Clinton’s stance on Iraq as being on the extreme right of the left. The same goes for Joe Libermann. The center is no more the true center and the right has extended itself so far that the progressives are now closer than ever to mainstream.  Obviously something is far out of kilter here. But just because the political ebbs and tides have moved the political boundaries, don’t believe that the centrality of the American people has been susceptible. Yes, the American people have been susceptible to the fear-mongering of this administration, but when I look at my father I see a man amongst men, who stood up for their country willing to lay down their lives for the freedoms this administration has worked to abandon. When I look at many of my Viet Nam veteran brothers I see men who have been displaced by that war and extensively reminded of their traumas in this war. And yet not one of these men or women would hesitate to protect the Constitution of the United States even if it meant dying right now. And these are the freedoms that are worth dying for. These are the reasons to throw yourself on a live grenade to save your buddy’s life, and these are the reasons that our freedoms have remained intact for 231 years. The costs to Americans has been tremendous during our history, but the cost of losing it all now at the hands of a blathering idiot who wields the title of President of the United States is far greater. There is nothing shown by this administration and those who would follow in the same footsteps that will inspire such patriotism as our history documents. And this is one of the problems with having a professional military (need I mention a professional mercenary force?). They are trained to do their jobs even if they are seeing freedom being taken away from their countrymen in leaps and bounds. Their jobs mean the possibility of dying, but their patriotism would be better spent in protecting our freedoms than our individual lives. At least the Bush administration has succeeded in one thing. They have succeeded in perverting the very basis of the existence of our country and undermining the bedrock upon which it was founded. 5:46:12 PM    comment []

Monday, August 13, 2007

Today’s Topic: Karl Rove Resigns Regardless of whether Karl Rove may end up being bogged down by legal problems, which isn’t likely, Mr. Rove simply left this administration so that he may bring up the next one and nurture it to fruition. I doubt seriously if anyone in Karl Rove’s household actually wants him home full time and won’t be able to wait long enough for Karl to hit the election trail again. Thus, to my way of thinking, Karl isn’t leaving this administration because it is "vital to his family" but rather that it is vital to his career to leave while he’s still untainted by culpability in so many problems of this administration. Let’s face it. Scooter Libby got off without anything but a fine which republicans paid, and now Karl Rove will walk out of the White House on 29 March 2007 without ever having to answer to the call of a Congressionally issued subpoena. Yes, Karl Rove will be back, working on the sidelines of the next Republican presidential nominee. I leave it here for you to imagine just what the next Republican administration would look like. Certainly George W. Bush isn’t smart enough to have become president without someone of keen intellect in his corner. Without Karl Rove as his political finger pointing towards the conquest of the world, and Dick Cheney reaching over to pull that finger in a not-so-good fart joke, thus providing Georgie Boy with another good laugh, America may actually mean something positive in the world today.  Alas, whilst Cheney was pulling the finger of fickle fate with one hand he was directing 90% of the government to do what he said in a one handed concerto.  And with Karl Rove designing the political strategy and Dick Cheney doing everything else, George Bush couldn't stop laughing at the fart joke.  Not surprisingly, the one person to go is Karl Rove when he's politically the most vulnerable.  One supposes that Dick Cheney still has some good fart jokes in his repertoire and somehow is totally out of harm's way. So if you find that Karl Rove is behind a candidate in 2008 I’d suggest you not vote for that person. Karl Rove isn’t leaving the administration for the sake of his family. Karl Rove is leaving for the sake of his current political family and he’s now looking for the next candidate for adoption. 2:31:51 PM    comment []

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Today’s Topic: Nothing Worth Doing is Free of Pain I try to catch as many of the Sunday morning political pundit shows, but sometimes us little people have to say something too. In terms of America’s decaying infrastructure I’ve weighed in previously when the last Northeast power failure brought forward a George W. Bush promoting a rebuilding of our power grid to keep the system up and running. Now one would assume that once the President speaks publicly and emphatically on a topic, something would get done. However, nothing has been done and nothing is going to get done. The bridge collapse the other day in Minnesota isn’t going to change anything either. The problem isn’t in the design of a system but the effort of corporate America to keep their taxes low enough to use infrastructure without putting anything into the pot for rebuilding the same systems corporate America is degrading on a scale larger than all of the American public together. One can see a couple of bathrooms in a home housing 4 or 5 individuals, and the economics and planned degradation of the infrastructure works well with the designed systems. But when corporate America steps up with 12 stall bathrooms multiplied by 4 per floor per gender and holding a building encompassing 40 or whatever floors, the underlying system was never designed for such a large strain. Interstate road development was primarily accomplished under President Eisenhower, and for all practical purposes nothing has been added to our Interstate system, only maintained, and at that maintained at the lowest level possible. In a New York Times editorial about our infrastructure the recent steam eruption which occurred seemed to take precedent in the evidence, but no one seems to remember multiple times the citizens of Washington, D. C. were assaulted by sewer covers being blown up in the air. And that was YEARS ago. Now I’m not trying to say that DC has more problems than New York City. What I’m trying to point out is that we have had numerous events pointing to a degradation of our basic infrastructure, such that someone should have stood up and offered some type of solution way before now. At the least someone who chooses to run for national office should have reasonable expectations of beginning work on our infrastructure within his/her term of office. And there is only one way that I can see to even get the press space enough to bring the subject forward, which is to make corporate America pay a tax that equates to the needed efforts to upgrade our infrastructures, not just use them. Currently the public is paying the greatest portion of support for the infrastructure, which only equates to maintenance. Corporate America continues to build on that infrastructure without paying the consistently rising costs for the use of that infrastructure. In terms of building new corporate spaces developers have had to foot the bill for developing road systems to access those buildings, along with the non-treatment water runoff systems and extensions to the power grid. However, the increased demand produced by the growth of buildings using the infrastructure of both the power grid and the waste treatment systems has somehow fallen by the wayside. In the DC area, a lot of this concern for failing 40 year old infrastructure should be applied to the new 400’ tall bridging systems recently completed in the "mixing bowl" at I495/395/95 in Springfield, VA. If this system wasn’t built to withstand the daily grind around DC and will ultimately require the investment of multibillion of dollars to rebuild in 20 years or so, then we have an even more serious problem. Some of the problems associated with what we are seeing right now is a direct result of a government that has continued to pander to big business, offering numerous tax incentives for moving to a specific location to even producing even less proficient output then for which their own systems are designed. A good example of the last of these tax incentives is how the original incentives for farmer subsidies was based on not having farmers flood the market with corn when everyone else was growing corn, etc. The problem is that the subsidies didn’t end when large Agri-business started holding more farmable land than the small farmers of America, and those subsidies have paid for an entire industry that today kills off those same small farmers the subsidies were designed to protect. So how does this play into the infrastructure today? Actually, that’s pretty easy. Within those same subsidies, which grew to the large scale Agribusiness, we have major problems that exploit our ailing infrastructure while it is also assaulting our environment. The Agribusiness uses 90% of petroleum based nitrates to encourage growth in the fields, of which the run-off is allowed to get into the environment of small streams, concentrating in larger rivers, and further concentrating in large bodies of water where a majority of our seafood spends its time growing into maturity. But that isn’t by any means the whole problem. It is just a part of A problem. When corporations concentrate their work force in one geographical location there are increases in gasoline consumption with the associated increase in hydrocarbon emissions, but there are other long term noticeable problems, like summertime oil expulsion from roadways that not only ends up untreated into our water runoff systems but these factors cause numerous accidents from quick summertime rains and the surface oils causing hydroplaning. So our infrastructure design isn’t just dumping particles of tire wear and oil into our environment, but causing accidents which add to the overall cost of insurance. Now to get back to the Sunday political pundit shows, where I just watched Pat Buchanan suggest that America’s infrastructure problem was due to a $2.1 TRILLION trade deficit because of rampant consumerism. Now how I view this is somewhat different than Mr. Buchanan. First of all, for those people who have virtually no more money than is necessary to supply anything but the absolute minimal levels of existence, well, we can’t blame consumerism on them. The amount they consume is of such a small amount as to become nil in any economic equations. As far as I can see, this is just an effort to export the concept of the 80’s "welfare queen" to blame all average income Americans. So where does one put the 45 million individuals who are not consuming such necessities as being covered by insurance? The answer is that they are consuming a large portion of non-recoverable expenses because they have no insurance and yet receive treatment.  And yet, even today, we see donation sponsered Christian hospitals charging higher than insurance costs to those that were told they would receive treatment on a compassionate basis. Where are the multigenerational farming families daily losing their farms a part of the consumption problem supposedly generated by average Americans? And as much as someone might want to think that the beginning of this blog and this portion of the blog don’t have a relationship to each other, let me make this clear. We are at a point in our society where corporations create the products and sell them by creating a need that most people don’t understand but accept because we should be able to trust corporations. This is the great failure of the New Deal, which the Republicans have been trying to kill since Richard Nixon and had greater effect under Ronald Reagan. It is one thing to implement strategies that effect an entire population, but it is another to make certain that the policies prescribed by those strategies are truthfully and straightforwardly explained to the people. FDR didn’t think one could educate the masses and still implement a startling policy which supported the ultimate rebirth of America.  Yet somehow he felt that the Marshal Plan needed explaination to the American public. Whilst the Marshal Plan succeeded, the New Deal only had the benefit of the lower income Americans and thus became fodder for the current day Republicans who desired to end the New Deal and demand an explanation to "their" America. Under this guideline then I’d have to say that this government for the last 50 years has a lot of explaining and teaching to do in order for the people to actually realize how we got to the place where when I flush my toilet I’m actually spending my money so that corporate America doesn’t have to spend a penny when 1000 of their employees flush the toilet. Under this guideline then the government would have to explain why we have fish kills from extreme nutrient runoff and yet no government agency is responsible for ending the cause of the fish kills, thus killing off a non-related industry and putting hardworking fishermen out of business from lack of product. And yet they flush their toilets too and it costs me money. Under this guideline the government needs to explain why personal taxes go up when public projects are encouraged and yet tax incentives and subsidies are supplied to those corporations our taxes are being used to support, often without our knowledge. The biggest fallacy corporate America presents to the public is that they are indeed supporting the growth of the infrastructure based on their investments in fiber-optic networks or greater flexibility in their providing content, just in time inventory control that really means "its about damned time" which causes one to buy more toilet paper when they finally find it, and other types of hype having nothing to do with the basic installed infrastructure upon which almost all Americans depend. The fact is that I want to know just how much better I’m going to be able to flush my toilet down the fiber-optic cable. I mean whilst I’m paying for a service whose company income doesn’t pay a cent per thousands of flushes from their corporate headquarters, then where is my improved infrastructure? My guess is that none of these companies even try to flush their toilets down the new high-speed fiber-optic cable, and somehow I can’t expect to be able to use the sewer for my Internet connection. They get paid for one and use the other, I have to pay for both. Come on, Pat. Is this what you would really call rampant consumerism? High-speed Internet so that you can do work and you pay for it, which is perfectly fine. Want to use the toilet? You pay for it, which is perfectly fine. The company that supplies you the high-speed Internet gets paid. And when the thousands of employees flush the toilet per minute the taxpayer pays. To me it looks like the downfall of America. Warren Buffet recently spoke of paying taxes on a PBS broadcast with Bill Gates at Harvard, I believe, and he mentioned that he paid 17% in taxes on his income and his secretary paid 30% on her income. So if you look at it right Mr. Buchanan, I’m paying more for you to take a shit in your home and your office than you are, and when you speak on television I’m apparently getting some shit again. But somehow it’s my fault because of my rampant consumerism. Until corporate America pays their full way the United States will continue to have a trade deficit that has nothing to do with rampant consumerism as much as it does with incentives and subsidies to those same corporations. When a corporation moves its manufacturing offshore is it the consumer’s fault?  No, it is a desire to make prices cheaper to create rampant consumerism. When Congress gives corporations incentives and subsidies involving billions of dollars, which pay these same corporations for NOT PRODUCING a product, is that the consumer’s fault?  No, but such actions largely contribute to higher costs. And when corporate America doesn’t have to pay for the usage of the American infrastructure and yet gets the full benefit of a single individual’s income, is that the consumer’s fault? No, but shit has always flowed downhill, as Mr. Buchanan already knows. Like the title of this article says, "Nothing worth doing is free of pain." It’s about time corporate America started feeling some of the pain. When State Farm can deny a policy holder indemnity payment on their premiums based on water damage to their home during a hurricane, one has to wonder just where the fuck State Farm thought the water came from in the first place. Yet State Farm pays pennies per thousand of flushes when I pay the same for one flush. When Haliburton can rip off the American people for tens of millions of dollars and still get paid their next invoice, all the while paying pennies on the thousands of flushes and I pay pennies per flush, then where is the waste you point to as rampant consumerism. When I pay extremely high prices for beef because the corn market has moved to providing lesser quality corn for ethanol, and yet the Agri-business corporate headquarters pay pennies per thousands of flushes and I pay pennies per flush, where is the rampant consumerism? And if you really want to point fingers, rampant consumerism comes largely from the top 10% of wage earners in this country, all of whom are getting exceedingly good tax rates and who happen to own some part of the majority of corporations within America, then I’m not only paying for the flushes of the toilets of corporate America, but I’m paying for the individual flushes of those who own and operate those corporations. When the bulk of the income to maintain the status quo of the infrastructure comes from me and people like me, then where does the expansion and/or redesign of the infrastructure come from? Corporate America has an unfair advantage and yet somehow Pat Buchanan suggests that the problems we face in the next 20 years are specifically because of rampant consumerism on the part of the average person. Well, Pat, if it comes down to people shopping at WalMart because it is inexpensive thus allowing those without a DVD player to buy one, then just remember that 200,000 people lost their jobs so that the DVD player was cheap enough because the jobs went to China via concepts you advocated 20 years ago. By the way, Pat. Have you finished your lessons in Chinese yet? 2:58:52 PM    comment []

Friday, August 03, 2007

Today’s Topic: Another Bush Grab for Power I’ve read the Executive Order President Bush signed the other day and I have to say this is just one more piece in the puzzle of George W. Bush. I’ve said before that he will never give up power, and it appears that his consistent grabs for more power into the Executive Office only work if he is the one that continues to control the use of those powers. I just read an article by Ian Welsh published on the blog Firedoglake on Saturday, 21 July 2007. Ian has a lot of the picture correct, and his historical analysis is right on. He even includes a statement by a Paul Craig Roberts "going so far as to say it was the last necessary piece being put in place before a possible coup". Now if anyone has read my blog, I declared in 2001 that George W. Bush was part of a coup. And I’ve said many times since that this man has no inclination to simply leave office when his term is due. And here is a list of some facts to support my supposition. Voter Fraud Signing Statements Executive Orders Expansion of Presidential Power to Subordinates Executive Privilege Politicization of Career Governmental Professionals Department of Defense closings of numerous National Guard stations Voter Fraud Much has been repeated in today’s media about the political requirements to clamp down on voter fraud, but the fact is that voter fraud has proven over the years to be a red herring. Fully 97% of all voter fraud investigations turn out to be wasted time. The large amount of voter fraud prosecutions are exceedingly small and the number of convictions usually spread amongst a few people without the wherewithal to actually defend themselves properly. Ian Welsh’s article has a very good take on the numbers of people incarcerated and what rights have been trampled upon in this endeavor to give the Executive Office supreme power, but what I’m talking about is different. Whilst there are innumerable instances of power wielded badly, there are more specifics towards the power grab of this person, George W. Bush, to consolidate his position far longer than which the Constitution allows. It’s funny that when Georgie boy couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer to the problem in Iraq, George’s daddy’s fix-it man became the head of the Iraq Study Group. But what is really funny is that James Baker was leading the charge of intimidating Florida election officials and vote counters in the 2000 election by creating "near riot" conditions at many of the "contestable" counting stations. At least it is funny that the American people don’t remember this. Remember that it wasn’t but 8 months ago when the American people placed their trust in James Baker and his ISG to come up with a solution that George W. Bush could not ignore. But ignore the suggestions is exactly what George W. Bush did, whilst stacking the deck of the Executive branch with political officers foisting the administration’s ideological viewpoint upon the governmental career professionals. This is the fun part. Ronald Reagan started the concept of dumbing-down the American people by cutting education whilst giving large tax breaks to the richest in the country (a policy that George W. Bush truly believes is a sound fiscal policy). And George W. Bush has expanded that dumbing-down to the executive agencies that are most responsible for providing support and relief to the American people (does anyone trust FEMA anymore?) Virtually all of the career lawyers in the Justice Department have left en masse. The new appointees and hires are from questionable schools of virtually no academic standing, and they obviously are pressured to expand the Bush doctrine into the very arm of government that is supposed to be above political chicanery. But I’ll speak more specifically of this later. The real point of all of this is that whatever entity directing the 2000 elections somehow managed a coup dé tat and life in America has gone down the drain since. If we allow George W. Bush to complete this coup then it is on our own heads. And the reason this administration chose voter fraud as the primary importance is totally misperceived, because most think it is to control the election cycles. The reason is more dastardly than that. We are talking about placing the onus on the 93 US Attorney’s to concentrate on voter fraud so that they wouldn’t be investigating the likes of Duke Cunningham and others that might be Republicans taking bribes. Another funny is that this administration chose to use the FBI to INVADE Congress and search for damaging evidence against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson just after a loss of majority in both houses of Congress. Never before has the FBI been used to intimidate Congress, but yet again the people of America have had the wool pulled over their eyes. $90 thousand in cash stuck in the man’s deep freeze? And with no witnesses to the discovery but the authorities? Now I’m not saying the man is innocent, but I’m saying that the Constitution says he’s innocent, and it takes much better evidence to honestly bring a man to justice. However, since a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, as has been oft quoted, then we’ll have to see just how this turns out. But one Democrat amongst hundreds of Republicans, the number of investigations which continue to grow, doesn’t make a case against Democrats. And if a state’s choice for representation can be intimidated by storming Congress to find evidence of wrongdoing, then how is it that Ms. Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego was let go for "poor performance" just after she had obtained a guilty plea from Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham and had "other" investigations in the cue. Perhaps if Ms. Lam had paid more attention to the Justice Department guidelines on wasting time investigating questionable voter fraud she’d still have a job. This one thing is certain. The people involved with the continuing investigation have gotten away without further scrutiny. The American people will never know just how many people were involved with the Cunningham scandal, but I can say with reasonable certainty that the Washington Madam has phone records which will reach into the very bowels of the previous Republican majority, and somehow new heads will roll. And again Watergate will figure prominently in the Republican’s demise. As an addendum since this entry is taking some number of days to compose, today, 27 July, 2007, we have additional White House and DOJ documentation which shows implicitly in politics of the Republican Party having invaded the numerous agencies of the Executive. These documents also show that the RNC (with White House approval) designed a system to eliminate probable Democratic voters from some of the key states in the 2004 elections, including Ohio and Florida. The documents show the requirement to purge as much possible Democratic votes as they could, whether legal or not. They also show that voters be damned, any level of chicanery was reasonable to guarantee George W. Bush’s re-election. And even a post addendum, which is a report that enough of the Ohio votes have been misplaced or destroyed so as to make any questions about the 2004 Ohio presidential election votes moot. Without all the information, we have no information. And this is after a Federal Judge ordered the records held until a Federal lawsuit was completed. I mean, what do you say when a Federal Judge says "hold all the ballots until a decision has been made in the lawsuit" and Ohio State officials do the exact opposite? Admittedly they didn’t destroy ALL of the records, but just enough of the records that a true determination of the count couldn’t be accomplished. This is pure Bush politics, or should I say Rove politics. Politics are supposed to play a part in our representative form of government during elections, and yes, even in deliberation of legislature. But politics are not supposed to leak over into the professional career agency employees, and the dirty games of politics are not to be given free reign to deny the ability of the American people’s votes being counted properly, much less from having one’s vote be denied due to politics. Signing Statements I’ve written about this before so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the subject. Historically signing statements represented what a president didn’t like about a particular bill but found no reason to veto the bill, thus signing it into law. Never before this president has anyone had the balls to suggest that the president himself has the right to determine whether a signed bill is up to his standards on whether the bill itself is Constitutional or not. There’s also this "assumed" concept of the Unitary Executive, which simply means that the president is in charge of the entire executive branch, regardless of how that branch came into existence. Now in case some don’t know, Congress has the right to establish new administrative functions and agencies within the Executive, not the president. So when Congress decides to set up such entities as Inspector Generals for the agencies within the executive, Congress also is the controlling entity for purposes of its ability to provide Constitutional checks and balances. The concept of a unitary executive is specifically designed to eliminate congressional oversight and the concept itself originated with a young lawyer in the Reagan administration who has now become Supreme Court Justice Alito. With the concept of a unitary executive and the possible legal standing of such, the Constitution will become so much paper that cost taxpayers millions of dollars to try to maintain. Perhaps it will become a far greater dollar value to maintain the paper the Constitution was written upon than the dollars spent upon the meaning of the words contained within. For surely if the president claims the right of determining whether a bill passed by Congress is Constitutional, then why do we need a separate Judicial branch to make the same determinations? Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Either we have Constitutionally designated checks and balances between the three co-equal branches of government, or we all just have to throw up our hands and praise King George W. Bush. I kind of like the Constitution idea. Executive Orders I first wondered about George W. Bush’s intent whilst in office when the first publicly acknowledged Executive Order he signed classified previous presidential records so that they were no longer available to the American public, conceivably even withheld under a request on the Freedom of Information Act. Now it didn’t make a whit of difference if the records in question might have already been researched for differing projects because the new secret classification meant that the release of information would become a matter of national security. Why did George W. Bush do this? In the days when the executive order came down I assumed that it was because all of the skeletons in the Bush’s closets would be well hidden, but I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that former President Bill Clinton would fall under this mantle also. What did it mean? Well, it didn’t mean squat for anyone that this administration wished to denigrate. It meant that the availability of presidential records were subject to the executive office’s determination whether they wanted the requested information disseminated or not, and whether, by that dissemination, they would gain or lose ground. Politics have never been played this ingeniously nor as baldly in history. Hence no one took notice. But the fact is that this president wanted the ability to alter history to his political advantage, and anyone who was alive during the Clinton administration knows that the history has been altered and the facts obscured. At the least they have been obscured by the classification that denies people the right to know the facts. The easy thing is to say that every executive order from that day forward has gone downhill. And it must be noted that the presidential records order was about 1 month after Bush took office, not after 9/11. If one doesn’t have an extreme reason to deny the American people the records of fact, then one shouldn’t be able to get away with an executive order that denies the American people the facts. Bush did, and well before 9/11, so his stated concept of being a compassionate conservative really doesn’t mean anything unless we define whom he is being compassionate to. The Republican Party and big business would be my immediate guess. Expansion of Presidential Power to Subordinates Herein lies one of the most diabolical threats to the concept of democracy in America. In America the people have the right to vote for their representatives in this government. That means the people vote for their direct Representative to the House, and for two state representatives to the halls of the U.S. Senate. We have one election every four years that goes to our representative to the world and that position is President of the United States. Now notice something here. There is a position in this country called the President of the United States of America, but only a person elected can have the affectation of Mr./Ms. President for a maximum of eight years.. What I’m talking about is that the person doesn’t define the job, the job defines the person. A person elected to the office HOLDS the title of President, but indeed does not become the President. The person and the office are two distinct entities, one holding sway over hundreds of years of history, one holding title for a few scant years, essentially a placeholder in history for the next person to inhabit that office. But that person is elected to a position and is expected to carry out that position to the best of their abilities. One of those expectations is described in the oath of office, which is to "uphold the laws and to defend the Constitution of the United States of America." Although the job is tough, the requirements aren’t all that demanding in the scope of understanding. You are there to keep the law and make sure that the Citizens of the United States of America’s constitutional rights are not trampled asunder. The point of accountability in terms of congressional oversight of those elected by the people means that the President must abide by the Constitution if he is going to protect it. And while I’ll admit that any President does have the right to gain counsel without the fear of negating the privileged communications, no President has the right to simply ignore Constitutionally directed congressional oversight by virtue of Executive Privilege. I’ll get to Executive Privilege in the next subject as the point isn’t Executive Privilege, but the purposeful transfer of power off the one person who is accountable for actions of the Executive to those that are not normally in the loop and consequently outside of the area of accountability. In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney held a meeting of a group of people who talked about the American people’s business towards concerns about America’s energy prospects, yet we have no record of whether indeed those discussions were in the people’s interests or the interest of the people attending the meeting. One must assume that any effort to conceal the dialog of the meeting means that the dialog had nothing to do with the people’s business but rather those discussing the matter’s own wellbeing. The fact that this administration fought so vehemently to maintain control over the exposure of that meeting means that there is nothing there for the American people to see. For if there were information from said meeting that equated to the interests of the American people, such information would have been supplied so all could see that this administration has the American people at heart when conducting the business of the American people. The result is a primary target in this administration’s primary benchmark of the Iraqi government’s legislation. Only will this administration be glad to call Iraq a victory when the Iraqis pass legislation which gives American and British big oil the rights to exploit the petroleum under the sands of the Iraqi people. If this president can give a subordinate such power as to direct exploitation and negotiations affecting the American and Iraqi people’s rights, then the concept of delegating authority has gone well beyond what any American should accept. Thus the concept of expanding executive branch authority and then authorizing execution of that authority to those not elected by the people is a morphing of our governmental system into a different form of government called an oligarchy, which is defined by one source as follows: "1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few." The problem is that the few aren’t specified and for those few there are no avenues of accountability in a system of government which requires checks and balances. Executive Privilege Actually, since Executive Privilege is bound for the courts in the case of Harriet Myers not even appearing at a hearing after subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee, we’ll have to let this one play out. The results may well be more informative to the American public than anything I could say. However, to just cover a few instances of the claimed Executive Privilege, let’s just say that Harriet Myers wasn’t required to do anything but appear and then exert her rights to Executive Privilege to end the Committee’s involvement with the line of questioning they wished to apply. But since Ms. Myers wasn’t a part of the congressional approval mandated for all agency political appointments, the supposition was that she was above reprisal by Congress simply because this President ordered her not to appear. This is a power no president has ever had associated with his office. A subpoena from any level of Congressional committee is not an area the president has the authority to ignore, much less order a subordinate to ignore. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as both Harriet Myers and Josh Bolton currently are being held in contempt of Congress. It will also be interesting how the White House Political Director, Karl Rove, will respond to a subpoena from the same Senate Judiciary Committee issued yesterday, 26 July 2007. If he, too, is ordered to ignore the constitutionally required congressional appearance due to a subpoena, then the floodgates will be opened. The really funny thing about this, (ironic, not ha ha) is that this administration’s statements have been that we have an "out of control party using investigation after investigation to garner today’s headlines". Now how it is funny is that from day one of the Republican Congress’ capture of the majority in 1994 (minus a Jeff Jeffries change to Independent in 2001), President Clinton was inundated with investigation after investigation in order to not only garner the headlines of the day, but to place the White House in a continual environment of playing defense against unfounded accusations. Supposedly that would have slowed down the office of president from doing the people’s business. Surprisingly, the people’s business was done quite well, with a balanced budget and the best record of putting people back to work, not only in the country, but in the world. This president uses Executive Privilege like a shield against both friend and foe. The consequences do not even require the wait until historians make their judgement. We have plenty to judge this president by now. But the fact is that historians won’t have a chance to wade in with their judgements. The people are going to be presented with just what lengths this president is willing to go to in order to fool the American people and garner as much power unto him as is feasibly possible. Don’t be fooled. We’re not talking about gathering power to the presidency, but to George W. Bush. Politicization of Career Governmental Professionals This particular topic has many ramifications, but the beginning of the obvious politicization was prior to the American invasion of Iraq, when Chief of Staff General Shinseki told Congress that it would take 3 or 400,000 American troops to effectively change the Iraqi government and supply stability to the nation as it changed governmental hands. The problem is that General Shinseki was effectively fired and Bush administration choices from the "yes" men of the military started to think of their careers rather than the overall question of whether indeed it was possible that Donald Rumsfeld’s concept of small decisive strike forces could actually accomplish the goals. The firing of the Chief of Staff or the military is not something taken lightly by the military. The same act isn’t simply lost on the other agencies of the executive branch as if such circumstances wouldn’t apply to them if they actually gave an honest assessment that was diametrically opposed to what the administration wanted people to say. Politicization of the executive branch negates all of the experience and knowledge those of career positions within that executive have fought long and hard to gain. The loss includes those of the CIA, the FBI and numerous agencies who would be instrumental in our ability to fight a new threat like international terrorism, which has the possible availability of agents of mass destruction. For your information, at least 8 million documents, this past year alone, from this administration were classified as "secret" or incorrectly classified as to maintain a high level of secrecy in the administration’s interaction with both the Legislative and the Judicial branches of government. This means hiding facts that aren’t even of concern and it means negating the co-equal branch status of both the Legislative and Judicial branches of our government. Now no one argues with the fact that the president has the authority to ask for anyone’s resignation within the executive at any time. How not if General Shinseki was ousted as the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? However, when the nature of resignations comes down to the obvious possibility of failure to follow a political agenda, then this becomes a matter of true national interests. Generally the concept of national interests means "self interest", which means that the goals of the country are directed by the goals of the few. Our government is based on the concept of the goals of the majority with acquiescence to the desires of the minority. There is no majority rules in our system of government nor is there any historical documents of our governing bodies that suggests the majority could reign over the minority as did the Republicans over the Democrats from 1994 to 2006. We saw both the concept that only those matters which pertained to the majority, as Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert declared, were the issues that would be debated and voted upon in the House, and we saw the threat of changing 219 years of Senatorial rules to allow a straight up vote, which the Republicans are now threatening to filibuster if such is applied to their minority. These are decisive indicators of politicization of the government, which means that none of the people’s work is being done. The concepts of the Founding Fathers are so far out of touch with our governmental representatives that nothing can or will be done in our names. The past 6+ years show us that an American government can ignore the will of the people and determine a roll for America that doesn’t fit with the America we grew up with. With the secrecy we can only say that we have no true idea of just how far this government is willing to go against the will of the people, and yet here we are. We know for a fact that President Bush isn’t listening to the people’s mandates by the 2006 election returns, and we know for a fact that this administration has it’s own ideas of what level of secrecy is necessary to overcome the will of the people and their representatives. We also know that laws have been broken by the very words of the Justice Department’s Liaison to the White House, Ms. Monica Gooding, who apparently chose to ask questions of political affiliations in hiring Justice Department career employees. This is decidedly against the law. In case one doesn’t remember this young lady, she chose to execute her Fifth Amendment rights prior to her testimony to Congress, thus establishing her train of thought that she might have somehow violated the rule of law in her actions. The Constitution says she isn’t guilty by accusation, but her actions suggest she had concerns about her legal standing, which required a congressional grant of immunity. There are so many examples of politicization of executive agencies that one simply doesn’t have the space to tell the entire tale. I’m already at 9 pages on this particular article and the end isn’t in sight. Somehow I have many topics yet to cover. Department of Defense Closings of Numerous National Guard Stations Ostensibly the closing of numerous National Guard Stations across the United States was based on a Stand Down order concerning the lack of an enemy such as the Soviet Union, but the fact is that the Stand Down is based on a number of new views towards how to handle national concerns. We only have to look at the outcome of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans, leaving 1900+ dead and showing ineptitude in the government’s handling of a national emergency. This happened in the last days of August and the first days of September of 2005. Today the city is virtually no better off due to governmental involvement. In fact, the city is worse off due to federal governmental involvement. But I don’t bring New Orleans up as just another failure of this administration. Rather I bring it up to prove a point. Whilst this administration has been working towards standing down National Guard units they have been employing National Guard units in their war of choice. The net effect is that when the poor New Orleans population was dying there were virtually no National Guard units available once Louisiana’s Governor made it absolutely clear that this was a national disaster. Even then we are talking about the inability of fully 40% of the National Guard contengent being able to respond because they were in Iraq. Not only were they in Iraq, but 60% of their equipment which allowed them to respond to national emergencies was in Iraq. Bad day for Bush, but a worse 2 years for the people of New Orleans. Can one even question the statement that the administration didn’t know what was happening in New Orleans when we have video of President Bush being appraised of the circumstances involved with the city on day one. How is it that Bush isn’t being held responsible by the American people for 1900+ deaths from Katrina? Is it because Americans don’t care about the death of poor people, or they don’t care about the death of poor blacks? About the only white people who died during Katrina were either poor from the St. Bernard’s parish or those murdered by the hospitals and old folk’s homes because there was no means for evacuation and no real chance for survival. So much for the National Guard not being needed during national emergencies. And so much for the institution of deploying mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans as a test to over-riding Posse Commitatus. The end of Posse Commitatus was accomplished by the government employing "free market" companies to do the business of government, implanting contractors who’s allegiances might be questionable in place of federally paid employees or military, whose allegiances have been a given for 200+ years. Worse yet, we now know that our intelligence agencies are fully staffed by 60% contractors who may well have their own agenda towards continuing the constant of war for profiteering. And thusly we show that hiring mercenaries for the purposes of doing the business of America is a bad idea. These same mercenaries claimed to have both arrest powers and "shoot to kill" authority in New Orleans, vested in them by "the powers above". Since these are some of the same people who were employed by the United States as mercenaries (oops, Contract Security Personnel) in Iraq, and considering they were still employed by the same companies who deployed them to Iraq, one has to consider that this administration is willing to hire mercenaries to quell public unrest as well. Only one section of the Executive Branch has the power to authorize armed civilians with arrest and shoot to kill authority being placed upon America’s streets. It happened in the old west with the Pinkertons and it is happening now, even though the laws have changed. Since the time of paramilitary boots on the streets (or in the water) of New Orleans this administration has opted to hoist a flag of total authority over what has traditionally been the domain of State’s Governors, which is to claim the ability to mobilize the National Guard without State Governor’s approval. This action would obviously mean that the President holds the keys to the total mobilization of not only the active military and it’s civilian mercenary contingent, but the very Militias the second amendment refers to, which by the Constitution are delegated control by the individual states. When one person holds the power to invoke all of the military and civilian contracted paramilitary might of a country, then the only question becomes where and upon whom that might would be wielded. How not the civilian population of America if all of this is done in quasi-secrecy? And by quasi-secrecy I mean misleading statements and misdirection of actions. If one is confused it is the same result as one being ignorant of the facts. Confusion seems to be top most in the mind of Congress these days as they try to make heads or tails out of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ numerous appearances on Capitol Hill. This administration continues to hold back information and find legal precedence to ignore Congress, thus prolonging the day when all of these other pieces of the puzzle of a true coup in America fall into place. But the plan itself is falling apart at the seams. The National Guard has been decimated, that is true. But the spirit of what is the National Guard has not been decimated, and in that one fact the wheels that have been slowly turning, moving cogs that may well no longer move pertinent other cogs which no longer have a place in today’s social-political environment, and the goals of the Neo-Con politically astute may well be falling on deaf ears. In the one case, a federal judge, the first appointed by George W. Bush, rules against the Bush administration in a case very important to the maintenance of unequivocal power of the Executive. In another case another Bush appointment rules that all of those decimated by Katrina, who sued insurance companies for their ill-defined "water damage" clause in the insurance contracts, just decided that "water damage" was good enough, regardless of whether a hurricane tore the roof off of your house and then preceded to rain on your house and destroy the rest of the structure. The mismatched cogs continue to turn and the outcome is usually to the detriment of the people of this great country, but those cogs will ultimately break when the force is increased and the breaking point is achieved. All of the eggs are in one basket of this administration, and the fact is that the basket is bulging from the weight. Some of the eggs are currently leaking. Ultimately when the omelet is made it is going to taste bad to all of the American citizens, even those who created the omelet. You can’t mix bad eggs with good eggs and end up with a good omelet. And you can’t mix bad government with good government and still have good government. 2:09:21 PM    comment []

Monday, July 16, 2007

Today’s Topic: Writing Law For or Against One Individual I have to admit I didn’t like the fact that an obvious murderer, O.J. Simpson, was acquitted, but I also have to admit that the prosecution didn’t do their jobs well enough. I tried to sit through the trial and assume the mantle of a juror, and with what was presented and what was withheld, I would have voted for acquittal myself. So when it came down to the civil wrongful death suit filed by Ron Goldman’s father and Nicole’s family I figured some measure of justice would be accomplished. I was wrong. Californians decided that they needed a new law that takes the right of confronting your accuser for purposes of cross-examination away and so enacted such a law that allowed the dead victim’s diary to speak for them. The concept was to establish a frame of mind but I can tell you from experience that frame of mind isn’t always accurate and thus cannot be used for purposes of judgement. For instance, the frame of mind of most inmates would be that they are innocent, and apparently in death row cases at least 1% have been, as shown by Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project (yes, the same Barry Scheck who worked on O.J.’s defense). My ex-wife's diary and letters surely would have convicted me even if I was seven states away and in the hospital were she to have been murdered. But my point isn’t that O.J. was determined innocent or guilty, but the fact that making law designed to convict one person is bad law, and bad law comes back to haunt us. The longer bad law is in place the more it will haunt us and the wider spread it's use. And so it is that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 has placed our court system into such a quandary that a person convicted of killing an off-duty cop cannot get recantations of testimony before any appeals court. This law was primarily aimed at making sure Timothy McVeigh didn’t have any means to escape justice, but when the chips are stacked against you, one has to wonder whether justice is the actual outcome.  Justice only comes when both sides have the chance to properly and legally present their sides. When the witnesses who helped put a man on death row recant their testimony the entire trial’s outcome becomes suspect. When witnesses then say that they were pressured by the police to testify in a specific way, our system of justice becomes suspect. When Troy Davis, 38, takes that last walk all of America should be held accountable for continuing to allow this country to use the death penalty. Allowing eyewitness testimony to help put someone to death has been proven time and again to be specious at best. Psychological studies have proven that even two witnesses to a staged event could not agree on what they saw, much less assume what the motivations precipitating the even could have been. Not only is it most likely that witnesses to any event wouldn’t perceive that event in the same way, but it is highly likely that they wouldn’t perceive the event in its entirety, regardless of what their testimony might indicate. If a person is having a picnic and paying attention to their romantic inclinations it is far more likely that an event could come and go before any attention is paid at all. Then a person reports what they half heard as an event they fully witnessed. In the case of the recent VA Tech killings, it is more likely that most "witnesses" were actually possessed of a strong sense for survival rather than paying attention to the events at hand. Had the shooter not killed himself it is likely that there would have been at least several different versions of the events that transpired, and none of those eye witnesses would have had an inkling of the motivations. And as I said, at least 1% of all death row inmates have been recently shown to have been convicted and sentenced to death whilst being innocent. The problem is that prosecutors now have the legalistic tools to present their suppositions to a jury as if those suppositions were facts in evidence. And they can do this because they can use the testimony of particular individuals whose testimony matches the information they wish to present. In other words, prosecutors can pick and choose. Defendants cannot. When law is written as a knee-jerk reaction to events or individuals, then we as a society fail the test. More than likely there are plenty of laws on the books that deal with the problems we experience as a society, so why enact what became the "car jacking" law in the 90s?  Congress jumped to make special law involving car jacking and yet we already had all the law necessary to prosecute criminals who would perpetrate a car jacking. Another law so aimed at particular types of individuals was introduced during the "cocaine" days of the 80s and 90s. Suddenly there was a special law involved with possession of cocaine, which was already covered by numerous prior laws, but there was a special twist. Since white people were more likely to possess cocaine in powder form and blacks were more likely to have "crack" cocaine, an imbalance of sentencing guidelines put those possessing powder cocaine into a separate category. Thus, white people could be sentenced to lesser time of incarceration or even get probation whilst black people mostly went to jail for the maximum duration. It didn’t matter if a white and a black had exactly the same amount of cocaine in their possession. It only mattered whether one had powder and the other crack. Had it been a reversed situation where the white person had crack the guidelines were thrown out and the white person was allowed to be prosecuted by the state rather than in federal court. But if the person were black, regardless of powder or crack possession, we’re talking about federal prosecution and stiff guidelines. William S. Sessions, FBI director under both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush said, "There is no more serious violent crime than the murder of an off-duty police officer who was putting his life on the line to protect innocent bystanders." But he admitted that "serious questions have been raised about Davis’ guilt," and that it would be "intolerable to execute an innocent man." And this is the crux of my argument, which is when we design law to specifically address one action or one individual we set a precedent which allows innocent people to fall victim to an unbalanced judicial system. People shouldn’t be put to death when even the smallest possibility of innocence exists. Personally I believe that the state for the reasons I’ve stated above and others should never execute people, but even I have to be a realist. We do have death sentences and as the state is sworn to protect innocent citizens it seems ridiculous to me that anyone might be put to death with the possibility of them being innocent. Hence, the state is NOT protecting the citizens if it cannot protect an individual citizen who might well be innocent. There is something wrong with our judicial system when citizens can be convicted of heinous crimes based on specious or pressured testimony from eyewitnesses. Forensic science has come far enough to free 1% of death row inmates so shouldn’t we rely more upon a science that can free innocent people rather than unreliable eyewitness accounts that can kill innocent people? 9:15:46 PM    comment []

Monday, July 09, 2007

Today’s Topic: A Constitutional Conversation, Part 2 This is a continuation of my conversation with Milton Scritsmier: I said: When the Navy website suggests that Gitmo is indeed an American Territory than is that any different that when a Supreme Court Justice declares corporations have the rights of a person? Even if it makes a more acceptable place for enemy combatants to be held without redress to the American court system, we have court and non-court precedence that make Gitmo an American Territory. We could reign there for time Immemorial and still it would be a lease? We exhibit sovereignty over Gitmo ipso facto we have sovereignty. Milton replied: I still have to disagree with you on this one. While a whole stack of things like website pages do have some legal standing, I just don't see how they can stand up to a direct Supreme Court decision. I do have a question for you that is a little off the topic of whether or not the prisoners in Gitmo should have full access to our legal system. Have you considered that it would be nearly impossible to convict any terrorist captured on a (foreign) battlefield? Any captured terrorist would immediately need to be Mirandized (in Arabic), presumably by the soldier that captured him, or else that would be grounds for dropping the charges. First off, I contend that if we act like we have sovereignty than we do.  Legalities be damned. However, I don’t contend that an opposing soldier deserves criminal treatment in the sense of a guy who stole an old lady’s purse or even John Wayne Gacy, but the fact that establishing people who fight against America as enemy combatants, and then extending that to "illegal" enemy combatants is just a "go around" for this administration to treat these people any way they want. The concept of wearing a specific uniform issued by a sovereign power being the deciding factor is specious at best. Even the U. S., prior to being the U. S., fought sans uniforms against the British during the American Revolution. Using something as baseless as not having uniforms shouldn’t be a qualifier for treating our enemies as if they don’t deserve basic human rights and reasonable determination of their status. And one must admit that in countries such as Afghanistan, which American could decide that they WEREN’T wearing what they considered to be uniforms other than the President? In Saudi Arabia the significant aspect of familial or governmental affiliation resides directly in the headdress, not a full body uniform.  Palestinians are much the same. However, one only has to look at how the U.S. treated German POWs to understand the difference between Prisoners of War and "enemy combatants". Largely we are talking about a normal soldier who is simply following orders and as such were treated with a great amount of respect once captured. Many were brought to the United States and interred in POW camps in the south where prisoner congregation wasn’t denied, where the prisoners were responsible for building their own quarters, and when quarters were only tents, then American soldiers who guarded the Germans lived in tents too. Respect for the human condition. It is interesting to note that when the war was over a significant portion of Germans held on American soil chose to stay and work towards citizenship. And yet interment alone shows that American soldiers are indeed sometimes prison guards. They are never cops nor are opposing soldiers criminals, so no such attitude should be taken as to how enemy combatants are captured, but how they are treated goes a long way towards defining the country they were captured by in the world’s opinion. A lot could be learned from how the U.S. treated German soldiers. Conditionally, one would suppose that the capture of Afghanis who ended up in Gitmo would have been any number of soldiers without knowledge of any big goals but more likely glad to be fighting America. And with the number of events influenced by either indirect or direct covert actions in that particular region, I don’t blame them. We didn’t like the British becoming more involved with America’s day to day life and we kicked them out. Thus, to the victor go the spoils. But I can’t even blame Eisenhower’s approval of Allan Foster Dulles’ CIA actions to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected President to install the Shah (nor Dulles' later plan to overthrow Castro which was foisted upon John Kennedy). The middle east, and in specific, Iraq, has had problems since WWI when the British established Iraq as a country even though the populace didn’t want to be a "country". But I do blame American governmental policy for bringing this country to its lowest standing in the world it has ever had, and this downfall has happened due to an accumulation of governmental interference. As an aside, it took the British 2 years to conquer Baghdad, which should have shown some of this administration that the people are tough enough to tough it out. Seven thousand years of history is a hard thing to overcome.  They have exceeded that by a number of years already. So our problems started in 1924. It’s just taken 80+ years to adversely affect us. It seems that our soldiers would have to become very much like police officers, and in my mind that starts to violate the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act. And here we have a point of contention I’ve had since this war began and have spoken of previously on this blog. The employment of mercenaries, (i.e. contractors) has allowed President Bush to already test the legal limits by deploying these same Iraq war contractors on New Orleans’ streets within one week after Katrina hit, apparently with both the legal right of arrest, and the use of deadly force. This information came from interviews that I believe were published in the New York Times and is researchable. So where is Posse Comitatus when the government can put armed contractors on the streets of America with questionable authority, and who gave them that authority? Want another example of Bush’s attempts to end Posse Comitatus? How about shutting down numerous National Guard bases across the U.S., supposedly for the purposes of cutting costs, but the actual fact is that has precipitated the inability of the National Guard to reasonably respond to dire circumstances when they would normally have both the strength of personnel and local response time. And yet there is one more example of ending Posse Comitatus, which is a Presidential Declaration that under circumstances of calamitous events, such as an outbreak of a human infection from bird flu, the U.S. Army will be the responding unit of the federal government. Booted feet on the streets of America only under the control of the President. The fabric of the Constitution is unraveling ever more quickly. The New Deal is being undone, and our treaties with the world are naught but fodder for those who would ignore them. If the concept of American sovereignty was extended far enough it would even become an actual violation. I assume you don't care about the final disposition of the terrorists as long as it is done legally under our criminal system. Here’s where we actually don’t have a conflict. I don’t need the prisoners at Gitmo to become criminal defendants in American courts, but I do require that they receive the same respect that any criminal in the American justice system receives. It is one thing to be imprisoned by a foreign government, but it’s even more so a problem when being treated as a criminal with no rights equates to being a human being with a diametrically opposed ideology. And the worst part is that these guys just may have a legitimate argument. And this is my real argument. This administration supposes that they can do what they want with those captured opposing American machinations and domination whilst remaining aloof when it comes to becoming a signatory to the World Court because they don’t want our "soldiers" being held for war crimes. More likely than not it would be those who instigate and direct wars of choice would be held for war crimes, just as it was at Nuremberg. Hmmm, stare decisis raising its ugly head again! Guilty people should still be punished. Ah, in such a case as, say, Scooter Libby? You know, when it all comes down to the rubber hitting the road, one will always have this to say. Both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have weakened the Presidency by supplying pardons and commutations at the most inexplicable times. And just to make it clear, I don’t necessarily go along with all of the Clinton pardons either, but I don’t see how any of those players have suddenly become involved with government again when they were already convicted of having broken the laws of government. It’s not bad enough that Elliot Abrams was pardoned by Bush41. No, we had to have Bush43 appoint Elliot to even higher offices within the executive, regardless of the fact that an Executive Pardon equates to an admission of guilt. But no, that’s not even bad enough, because when George W. Bush wanted to start gathering all the information of everybody in the country, better known as the Total Awareness database, he chose Admiral John Poindexter to run the program. Another convicted Iran-Contra player whose conviction was only overturned on a legal technicality. At that point who knows whether it was Bush41’s interference as to further prosecution. After all, the conviction was overturned due to a technicality, not due to lack of evidence including Poindexter’s testimony to Congress. And so I say that yes, we as a people are bathed in Democracy, and yet the bathing apparently will never get us clean. If we’re dirty then who are we to complain when confronted with our apparent filthiness or stench? 2:59:37 PM    comment []

Friday, July 06, 2007

Today’s Topic Continued: A Constitutional Conversation I have 100 things to do between now and my wife’s 60th birthday party in August, but I’ll give it a try. In continuation of the conversation between Milton Scritsmier, I bring forward the following. I apologize to Milt because I can no longer go back through the sections and know that I won’t miss something, so I’ll include all of the applicable quotes without editing for purposes of not being seen as dodging answers. Now let me be clear. I may not answer a particular point, and it may be an oversight on my part or a conscious decision, but I will be including all of the communications that pertain to what I actually answer. Milton said: "Brown v. Board of Education" has (or perhaps had...) a lot precedence today. But at the time of the ruling it was a radical departure from previous precedence. We'd had decades of de jure segregation and it was at that time generally considered the norm. What right did the Court in 1954 have to throw out precedence that the Supreme Court does not enjoy today? How did a Court capable of imposing busing on states and redrawing school district maps evolve into a Court that today is not allowed overturn or modify earlier decisions?" My response is the failed policy of the Constitution describing a black man as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of electoral votes in the south. This inherently defined the worth of a black human’s life, which had been previously described deserving "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. Once Jefferson supposed that "all men are created equal" the only requirement left was to specify that a human of male gender indeed was created equal regardless of the color of their skin. And with suffrage we already have a definition that includes white women amongst those "equal". And so rather than the Warren court looking at just the Constitution they chose, and appropriately so, the underlying foundation of the Constitution, which was the Declaration of Independence. Prior to the Warren court most courts were disposed to simply apply the interpretation of the Constitution as written, but unless one realized that the Constitution is just a set of rules on how to govern with the Bill of Rights describing what the Government cannot do against the citizens, then one doesn’t get the whole picture. For indeed this government wasn’t founded upon the Constitution, it was founded upon the concepts in the Declaration of Independence, which defined the basic philosophy of the individual being "created equal". The Constitution only defines the working of government, not the ideals and philosophy that distinguishes just how valid the Constitution is as the best definition of government in the world today. Brown v. Board of Education needed to be brought to the forefront in the effort to expand the true meaning of "equal", and equal didn’t mean equal but separate, it meant a black and white equal (excuse the pun) as in "either it is or it is not". The case brought forward a specific in terms of applying education, but how, if both blacks and whites could learn to translate Socrates, Plato and others, would any equality be achieved if only one group was not allowed to express that knowledge, much less use the information to build a better life? In fact, to build yet a better America? And this brings me to your next question. "For example, is there a point at which de facto segregation is really just the places people choose to live? Fifty years ago nobody could even imagine a time when that might be the case. Now we see it perhaps just a generation or two away. If this happens, does the Supreme Court have the right to modify "Brown v. Board of Education" so that people are not "integrated" against their will?" Your question begs some inquiry as to what you actually meant to say. "Integrated against their will" has never been a question of equality. Segregated against their will is the norm for an establishment of equality that makes some more equal than others. Since all men are created equal, there is no "more equal" and still further, segregation cannot be a concern because there is no such thing as segregation. Your assumption is that some have a choice of segregation and so choose that segregation, and this may well be true in life, but not in government. The real point is that the majorities of "unequal" equals don’t have a choice of segregation and thus don’t have a choice at all. Equality negates the unavailability of choice. Segregation by outside forces, such as the availability of housing and schools in "other than" white areas defines unequal more effectively and nefariously than the Constitution’s 3/5ths of a person designation for slaves for votes the white people get yet the black people don’t have a choice in. How negative for racial and gender equality was this?. First off, it sanctified slavery in the Constitution, and it denigrated a human life by placing a value on that particular life. Did Ben Franklin have a value on his life? Were his works, his jeopardy in his experiments, and his patents, inventions and such a sum total of what his humananity encompassed? Then how about his diplomatic acumen? Would Booker Washington have ever been appointed to a post he may well have been able to perform, such as the Ambassador to France? But the point is when one has a choice when a choice can be made. If one doesn’t have a choice, and another does, then one is being denied their choice and as such segregation becomes the norm. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking about 100% segregation, but we are talking about segregation as being a battlefield that needed to be overcome. The Warren court risk the ire of the "segregation by choice" populace by deciding that the Constitution spoke to all of the people based on the precepts presented in the Declaration of Independence. So how now can I rail against this current Supreme Court who choose to put America back 100 years? That’s easy. I don’t know that the country can stand another fight to restore the rights of the entire people from 100 years ago, and I’m pretty certain that the fight shouldn’t have to be fought again. The matter only needs to be presented to the Supreme Court in terms that doesn’t allow for the court to ignore all the documents that establish the United States of America. The construct of "strict Constitutional interpretation" is a fallacy because the Declaration of Independence was the guiding document to establishing the workings of the Constitution. If one doesn’t allow for the ideology of the founding document then subsequent documents actually hold no meaning. Without the Constitution the Bill of Rights hold no sway. Without the Declaration of Independence the Constitution has no foundation, and without the Magna Carta the Declaration of Independence has no precedence. Suddenly stare decisis takes on a different meaning, doesn’t it? In fact, no stare decisis was ever in place from a previous decision prior to the decision in Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka).  Therefore the recent Supreme Court decision goes against the ONLY stare decisis in Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka) as the available precedent. So you can’t really get on the Warren court about following precedence because the only precedence was the Constitution allowing for slaves to equal 3/5ths of a human being. As no prior Supreme Court decision was made in the situation, I believe the Warren court should be held in the highest esteem for establishing a court mandated equality for all America's citizens. I’ll have to go to the next point tomorrow as I have work to do and it’s now past 1 PM and I’ve spent far too much time on the answer. 1:28:42 PM    comment []

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Today's Topic: A Constitutional Conversation Milton Scritsmier said: The Supreme Court in "Al Odah v. United States" stated that right to habeas corpus can be exercised in "all ... dominions under the sovereign's [United States'] control." and that this certainly applied to the detainees at Gitmo. However, they specifically said that ultimate sovereignty of Gitmo remained with Cuba. Also, I don't see how Iraq and Afghanistan are American soil. Both have governments elected by their respective citizens. One might believe that they are essentially puppet governments controlled behind the scenes by the US, but even if so they are still legally sovereign governments. # To which I replied: Hello Mr. Scritsmier, As far as Cuba, the lease for Gitmo specifically is for any duration as the United States sees fit.  Only the United States can terminate the lease virtually by packing up and leaving, or by renegotiating the existing treaty.  In essence, as the Navy's own website says, it is "for all practical purposes" an American Territory.  I'm not certain how the Supreme Court came up with the determination that Cuba has soveriegnty unless Cuba were to physically over-run the base because the United States isn't going to give Gitmo up.  The 1934 treaty gave the United States lease to the property in "perpetuity", and if, as the Supreme Court website I read on the case uses the 1903 lease as the guideline, they should have taken the 1934 treaty as the superceding document.  Besides, the reality of the situation doesn't hold true with a commonly argued precedent of "possession is 90% of the law".  Let's face it, we're there, we've been there from the 1903 lease and prior, we've been given perpetual use of the land at our own discretion and need, and we're not planning on leaving.  Sounds like an American Territory to me despite the desire to make it seem like something else so that Bush can hide his enemy combatants in some cubbyhole without due process.  Our Marines stationed at Gitmo are told that it is American soil and to defend it to the death. Pertaining to both Iraq and Afghanistan, the point was more along the lines of military bases, embassies, etc. (dominions), of which either by treaty with host countries, or by virtue of being an occupational force, one would have to conclude under any level of American or International Law that the above would still apply.  I can't say for certain, but I can say from my military experience that the United States considered all the bases in Southeast Asia to be American soil.  Having dominion is considered to be an act of territoriality whereby American law takes precedent over any local or regional legal system. However, until the Military Commisions Act is tested in the Supreme Court, obviously the legal determinations in this case of 2004 are also overturned. Habeas corpus supposedly doesn't apply to "enemy combatants" anymore, meaning a change in the status of said prisoners to not having the availability of American courts.  The obvious problem here that should be tested is Congress' ability to create a court system that isn't "inferior to the Supreme Court" as was specifically stated in the Constitution.  To me this is an unconstitutional law (Article 1, Section 8 The Congress shall have Power  "To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court), assuming that inferior means the same in the previous Republican majority's collective minds what inferior means in the context stated in the Constitution.  Congress cannot set up a court system that doesn't ultimately answer to the Supreme Court.  Congress CAN set up additional court systems, but the ultimate decisions come from the Supreme Court, which means that any law taking this avenue away from anyone held by Americans is unconstitutional. Either way, unless a test is brought to the Supreme Court, people will become used to yet another unconstitutional law that permanently weakens the Constitution without the necessary debate and supermajority vote necessary to amend the Constitution, as would be necessary to make a new court system that doesn't answer to the Supreme Court.  And as far as I remember, in Hamdan vs. Donald Rumsfeld the Supreme Court did not authorize Congress to set up a new court system concurrent with but unanswerable to the Supreme Court.  It just said that Congress was the body who had the right to establish military tribunals, not President Bush.  It was the Republican majority that pushed a bill and gave George Bush the opportunity to SAY that he had the right to suspend habeas corpus and remove the tribunals from any other court system. The lawyers can argue about the contents of a pastrami sandwich, of which the prosecutor can indict and the defense can make a case for it not really being a pastrami sandwich, but when it comes to enacting laws that are juxtaposed to what the Constitution says, then it is the American people who ultimately lose. The problem, as I've stated in other blog entries, isn't that the Supreme Court has ruled the wrong way, it is that the plantiffs have generally brought forward the wrong arguments, and the Supreme Court is going to rule on the arguments, not what the plantiffs really meant to argue.  With the status quo being the government over the state, the state over the citizens and corporations over the people, one has to argue a case very carefully. This has recently been given strength by the Supreme Court's decision that people cannot bring suit against corporations unless they can prove malicious intent with resulting bodily harm (hardly adequate to describe the ruling, but with this administration's desire to halt all suits that could hurt businesses, ultimately they have created a situation whereby it is virtually impossible to prove "intent").  With this ruling you'd have to be a mindreader to know the "intent" but then also have an avenue into a corporation's information to find proof of the intent.  It makes no difference if you ARE harmed by a corporation.  It only makes a difference if you can prove they intended to harm you. So possibly the concept of actually amending the Constitution so that Congress can legally set up a court system outside of the Supreme Court resides with someone who has the ability to test the law.  And with this Supreme Court, perhaps it is even possible that a ruling would forever change the intent of the Founding Fathers and make Congress able to make any type of court system they wish, all outside of the ability to redress greivences against the government by going to the Supreme Court. Kinda funny considering the current President ran to the Supreme Court rather than allowing the issues in Florida in 2000 to play out when it would have cost him the election.  At that time he wanted the Supreme Court to intervene.  You haven't seen a single time since that Bush has wanted the Supreme Court to intervene unless it meant his administration had carte blanche. In a return to my email, Milton presented the following: The arguments you present in favor of ultimate U.S. sovereignty are indeed strong, and earlier this year many of these arguments were presented to the Supreme Court in partitioning it to review a Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case (see http://ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/docs/AlOdah_CertPetiton_Final.pdf ). This decision of the Court of Appeals in its case rested heavily on the Supreme Court's earlier "Al Odah v. United States" decision and its statement that Cuba had ultimate authority over Gitmo. Since the Supreme Court chose not to grant this petition (thus letting the Court of Appeals decision stand), it was among other things essentially reaffirming Cuba's ultimate legal authority over Gitmo in spite of arguments similar to yours. If you look at the "Al Odah v. United States" decision, the Court's ruling on who has ultimate sovereignty over Gitmo is pretty unambiguous: The United States occupies the Base, which comprises 45 square miles of land and water along the southeast coast of Cuba, pursuant to a 1903 Lease Agreement executed with the newly independent Republic of Cuba in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Under the Agreement, the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the [leased areas], while the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United States . . . the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas. In 1934, the parties entered into a treaty providing that, absent an agreement to modify or abrogate the lease, the lease would remain in effect [s]o long as the United States of America shall not abandon the . . . naval station of Guantanamo. (see http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/03-334.pdf ) In general, how can any country lease or obtain land for a military base from another country without being granted the right to exercise total sovereign control? It just is not practical any other way. But if the United States truly owns Gitmo, then for example there would not be a provision in the treaty that the land reverts back to Cuba if we ever abandon the base. Under actual United States ownership, Gitmo would remain a piece of deserted American territory over which Cuba still would have no legal jurisdiction. And while it's true that when a country owns a territory it has total sovereign control over it, the opposite is not true. Britain had total sovereign control over the civilian population of Hong Kong which included Chinese nationals, but when its 99-year lease was up it couldn't claim that it now really owned Hong Kong. I'm not sure if "possession is 90% of the law" has any legal standing in our system. I'd like to think that if someone steals property from me then it's still my property. Not being a lawyer, however, I'll concede that there might be some limited legal precedent for such a notion somewhere. As a practical matter, however, this country used that "precedent" in taking land in our past. It's generally conceded today that these were not the moments that we would present to the world as shining examples of how well our system protects the rights of the weak. So I would consider it a bit contradictory to use this argument as part of a larger argument to establish the rights of the detainees. If I understand you correctly, are you are saying that because the Military Commissions Act has not been tested in the Supreme Court, then the prior "Al Odah v. United States" decision is overturned??? Are you specifically talking about section 7(a) which was passed in 2006 after the 2004 Al Odah decision? Or something else? If it's about section 7(a), this argument was included in the AlOdah_CertPetiton_Final.pdf document that I mentioned above. By rejecting this petition the Supreme Court was among other things making a ruling that section 7(a) does not change its earlier 2004 Al Odah decision. Even if you are referring to some other section of the Military Commissions Act that wasn't included in the above mentioned petition, in general no law passed after a Supreme Court decision can overturn that decision. That would be a direct violation of the separation of powers which would render the Supreme Court useless. At most a new law might trigger a new case before the Court. But until a new decision is reached the old decision is still the law of the land. No law can cause any Court decision to be overturned until the Court says it is. My comment on your original blog was actually meant to be confined solely to the issue of whether or not Gitmo is U.S. sovereign territory and not even whether or not this affected the rights of the detainees. I actually came across your blog while trying verify Michael Moore's statement in "SiCKO" that Gitmo was American soil. However, running across your blog did cause me to spend time (again) thinking about the whole detainees rights issue and how it ultimately affects the rights of US citizens. # (I apologize for the lengthy paragraph but I'm sure that it is a formatting problem and not the intention of Mr. Scritsmier) My reply follows: Nice to hear from you again, Milton.   I'm pretty certain that if Congress takes up legislation to address constitutional problems specified by the Supreme Court, then the court ruling is at least nullified as pertains to the unconstitutionality of the passage of a law or the law itself, but yes, the Supreme Court is the voice of the law and its rulings stand as the law of the land pending no further action.  In the case of the Military Commissions Act there are some specifics that apply to the ruling by the Supreme Court, but others that will need to be either tested in court, or will be dismissed by the Supreme Court as having been answered either by their own previous decision or by a decision rendered by the lower courts.  In effect, if no one questions the ruling, the ruling stands, but if one brings forth a definitive enough case the court may well listen.  The partial birth abortion ruling essentially goes against stare decisis, but it is one of the avenues towards picking apart previous court rulings by nitpicking it to death.   However...   I was more referring to the point that certain litigants have specifics they choose to contest in federal courts, and it is those specifics the Supreme Court will address most of the time.  Certainly Earl Warren's Supreme Court addressed the problems of racial inequality in advance, taking it upon themselves to create law where no law or protestations of law were present in the 1954 ruling of Brown vs the Board of Education Topeka (KS) and ended the possibility of "equal but separate" as equality.  Some terms used by the Supreme Court required action by agencies typically under the executive branch, specifically National Guard units, et al.  The Supreme Court doesn't even have the ability to describe just whom is responsible for the money necessary to implement usage of these troops, but yet it was done.   If you aren't an attorney you probably should have been, but at the least your reseach skills are excellent.  However, I am not an attorney either.  I just love history.   But I'll toss this one in just to confuse you, and it's one of the subjects I have talked about in previous blogs.  It goes to establishing law in the Supreme Court by simply admonishing a plantiff verbally on the perceptions of the court prior to any argument and ultimately the statement became the law of the land.   In 1886, Justice Whyte declared prior to opening arguments at onset of a suit by an individual against a corporation that "We do not accept any argument that a corporation does not have the state or federal rights of a citizen.  We presume they do."   Now I might have flubbed the quote since I am busy and didn't take the time to look it up again, but the context is correct.  By virtue of an authority making a statement that corporations were citizens prior to any argument before the court that such a characterization was even in question or possible, the Supreme Court gave corporations the rights of a person and it stands as law today.   We have an even more recent situation whereby an individual makes a statement that may turn into law with Vice President Cheney's contention that he is not a part of the executive, however this one isn't close to a Supreme Court case as yet.  If this doesn't go to court, it may well become a matter of fact regardless of whether indeed the Vice President presides over the Senate as President.  In actuality, if one goes to the executive branch website and looks at the organizational chart, the Vice President sits beside the President with no other affiliations, which may well be described as being outside of the executive branch by organizational structure.  The Constitution gives the Vice President one lonely job of being the President of the Senate.  It doesn't describe him as being a legislative member since he is one of the ONLY two individuals elected in the national election, which is that of the President and Vice President of the Executive Branch.  However stupid the legal question may be, we now have a generally accepted precedence (stare decisis) being questioned.   Vice Presidents have historically been rather obscure individuals without much in the way of political ambition such as Bush41 choosing drooling mouthed Dan Qayle, but the fact is that it was a pretty shrewd choice as no one would want to assassinate George H.W. Bush and have Dan Qayle as President.  On the other hand, a strong political choice for Vice President, such as Dick Cheney, pretty much guaranteed that a drooling mouthed George W. Bush would never be assassinated either.  I'll have to admit there have been Vice Presidents who have taken the oath of office of President and proven very much worthy of that office, but the selection process is different than the outcome more often than not.   The point is one thing I heard Chris Matthews say yesterday in his interview of the far right winged vixen, Ann Coulter, when he sugessted that today's Vice President is in fact a Deputy President with virtually all the powers of the President.  Who would question him?  In fact, who did question him when he went to the CIA and continually pounded them to produce intelligence that the CIA presumed the President wanted?  After all, it was the Vice President asking for it so the request must have a direct linkage to the Presidency.   Perception of a line of accountability.  Precedence.  Stare decisis.  These are the terms used by both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito in their Senate nomination testimony.  Obviously they didn't study as well as they should have or they actually reject both principles and lied before Congress.  OR the senators didn't ask the right questions.   I've always had a thing about how people ask questions.  I share the same ideal with many teachers.  It isn't so much that one needs to learn the answers to questions, but rather far more important to learn how to properly ask the questions in the first place.  I mean, if I say "I need to go to Chicago, can you tell me where to buy a horse?" am I asking for a horse to get to Chicago or am I asking where I can buy a horse once I get there?  I've harangued my children for 20 plus years about this.  But I digress....   Some laws survive simply because people accept an explanation of the law that doesn't adversely affect them by being singled out as an individual.  The 16th Amendment is a good example.  It was never properly ratified due to at least several states wishing rewritting of the wording but lacking additional congressional debate was declared "in effect" by Secretary of State Philander Knox and promptly written into the Constitution.  Subsequent arguments about being taxed illegally have had all their teeth taken out by virtue of the fact that the 16th Amendment exists and Congress always had the right to take people's income and property into account for purposes of taxation, even after 50 previous years of constant litigation in the higher federal courts that such was not the case.  In today's world, this is stare decisis rather than the previous 100+ years of no income tax.   So one person making a declaration about a specific legal question can easily become the law of the land.  When the Navy website suggests that Gitmo is indeed an American Territory than is that any different that when a Supreme Court Justice declares corporations have the rights of a person?  Even if it makes a more acceptable place for enemy combatants to be held without redress to the American court system, we have court and non-court precedences that make Gitmo an American Territory.  We could reign there for time Immemorial and still it would be a lease?  We exhibt sovereignty over Gitmo ipso facto we have sovereignty.   Only THIS SUPREME COURT would rule that Gitmo resides under the sovereignty of Cuba under the circumstances of today.  And I suggest that a proper argument before the court, sans my willy nilly ramblings, would produce a different result in the outcome only in a more thoughtful environment.  And yet if somehow this President needs Gitmo to become an American Territory, believe me, this Supreme Court will vote just that way.    Just as Vice President Cheney was a member of the executive branch when asked by congress for his attendee list at the Energy meetings, he now is a member of the Legislative branch and does not have to adhere to directives by the President to supply information about what and how he classifies information.   Something's wrong in River City. 12:05:18 PM    comment []

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Today’s Topic: Scott Ridder and the Jeffersonian Revolution After reading Scott Ridder’s article today from Truthdig (www.truthdig.com) titled "Repudiation, Not Impeachment" I have to say that I largely agree with his assessment, but strongly disagree that impeachment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al, is not really an option. Here’s how I perceive it. The truth MUST come out in a court of the people, which means impeachment. This way the facts will become a matter of public record in the halls of people where law is made and deliberation is the business of the people. I believe this is imperative, not for the purpose of our time, but for the record for those to come. If it could become so easy for the American people to allow the bastardization of the Constitution of the United States by an overzealous and politically oriented administration, then the people should be on trial too. Nothing would make this more plain than impeachment proceedings against an administration who sold a war of aggression with a pack of lies, politicized all of the agencies of the Executive branch, and garnered power unto themselves in excessive and extreme methods, all geared toward one party rule whilst putting the American people at greater risk on a day to day basis. I do like the idea of somehow making a statement of repudiation by the people for the vilest of efforts to render the Constitution impotent in the face of one man’s stubborn and ruthless disregard for everything American. America has been assaulted from within, our Treasury has been emptied, not in the efforts of war but by war profiteering, and 220 years of American history has been tainted in 6 short years. Like a cancer that has metastasized, the inroads to political control over both the Executive and the judicial systems have virtually left the Legislative branch impotent against the onslaught. But not because the Constitution doesn’t give the Legislative branch the ability to right the wrongs, but because the people of the United States have allowed the elected representatives in both the House and the Senate to ignore their mandates. Demonstrations are taboo with hundreds of thousands being spied upon and more being afraid of defending what this country’s guiding legal document really means. There is such a morass of impotence, both on the part of the people who elected a new Congress to combat the one party system being slid into place, and the impotence of those elected supposedly to do the bidding of their constituents. One can only wonder just what might make the people, the people’s representatives and the Executive take notice. Well, I have one idea, and this I offer in addition to the impeachment process. With two national elections in question and more negative information coming out every day, I suggest that the people protest the methodology by which potential presidential candidates are voted into power. In fact, I’d suggest that the American people simply protest everyday from here on until the November elections in 2008 and vow to not vote. I know, it sounds stupid because even if all the people swore off voting in the 2008 election, there would be some who would break their vows and vote, thereby gaining the ability to put their own choice into power. I ask you how this is different than what we have now? Since we cannot trust the results of a national election, then we MUST deny those who would bring election results into question to be put in a position of having no power. If they have no power they cannot have an effect. Power is the problem, and the Constitution is the answer to unacceptable power being garnered unto the grasp of a specific group of people. But the power can be gained even if the Constitution has methods of controlling a grab for power, as we have seen in the last 6+ years. Therefore we have no option but to divest those people with power. We need to take the power away from those who would negate the people’s rights to assembly, to freedom of speech, negation of unreasonable search and seizure, imprisonment without probable cause due to suspension of habeas corpus for presidentially declared enemy combatants, and the right to redress the government with our grievances. There is no better way than to deny the candidates the possibility of election by threatening not voting for any of them. If the people cannot regain what the Constitution has provided for them, then all is lost and this country will have fallen in 6+ short years under the direction of George W. Bush. Osama bin Laden will have won. Not because we didn’t stay in Iraq, but because he caused the downfall of America with our elected representatives responding just as he expected. For anyone who has spent a little time on studying the Soviet/Afghan War, it is obvious that Osama and the Muhajadeen played the Soviet powers like a fine violin and virtually bankrupted the Soviet bloc. Reagan was credited with the downfall of Communism in the USSR, but other factors were in play and far more important than a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. And yet, somehow, America is already at bankruptcy’s door with heavy debt to Japan, German, South Korea and China, but the real problem is the adverse reaction to 9/11 by this administration which has fundamentally negated the Constitution. If the state of America remains the same as today or gets even worse with the next president then truly Osama bin Laden will have won for he will, as this administration loves tell us, have destroyed our freedom. Osama fights a war that simply places our freedoms into the hands of those who would limit those same freedoms and he does so by telling you the truth. Osama did so when he told the American public that George Bush needed to be defeated in the 2004 election cycle. Since more of the same came from the White House we now know that we’ve created an environment that is rampant with fundamentalist militant Islamic recruitment. Hey, good one, Bush. Even a fish knows not to go after the bait all the time. 10:54:38 AM    comment []

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Today’s Topic: Not Much of a Way to Remember Those Who Have Served Service to our country can come in many ways, whether it be military service, public office, or community endeavors. However, I don’t find much in the way Memorial Day is any longer FOR honoring our courageous men and women who have served in the military. No, I find Memorial Day being USED by people for promoting their own agendas in a continuing spiral of degradation of the American way of life. Admittedly some of what I’m about to espouse isn’t necessarily directly attributable to Memorial Day services and such, but more along the lines of just what can be foisted upon the American public by those whom would use you to gain power. And let me be straightforward about this. Those who would use your fears, heap unsubstantiated slurs or mislead you in order to gain your votes are not people who wish to do a thing FOR you. Public service in terms of elected officials has become such a power play of gluttony that one wonders how more Americans STILL CANNOT see the forest for the trees. The trees, in this case, are the off and stumbling presidential candidates and are largely from both sides. Rudy wants to scare you into voting for him, as does John McCain, whilst Mitt Romney is resorting to full scale lies and misstatements designed to do the same thing and hopefully garnering him the religious right’s backing. During the latest debates, Rudy tried to continue the lies of a Saddam-Al Qaeda tie with 9/11. John McCain's message much presented the same thing, but since he’s been a "Stay the Course" guy with Bush that’s not surprising. The most surprising of all the statements I found was Mitt Romney’s efforts to scare Americans by lumping in Hamas and Hezbollah, both groups of which are listed as terrorist groups by the United States and yet hold elected political offices in their respective communities. Ah, but what was Mitt trying to do when he added to the lump both the Shia and the Sunni? To quote, Mitt said "They want to bring down the West, particularly us. And THEY’VE COME TOGETHER AS SHIA AND SUNNI AND HEZBOLLAH AND HAMAS AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND AL QAEDA WITH THAT INTENT." Either Mitt Romney is just as dangerous of a man to America’s ability to remain a democracy as Bush has been, or he’s just plain stupid. Why? Because he was stupid enough to designate virtually the entire Muslim world as enemies of the United States. And he did this on an internationally broadcast debate. If you didn’t know before 9/11, you damned well should know now that there are two religious sects to Islam. Those of the Sunni faith and those of the Shia faith. One supports the son of Mohammed as the continuation for the prophet’s teachings and the other supports the brother of Mohammed. It might seem like a minimal difference to you, but perhaps that’s just because you don’t know, don’t want to know, and damned sure don’t want to understand what that "minimal" difference is. And even this lack of knowledge on your part is forgivable and even understandable. But I cannot say the same thing for people who profess themselves to be the best person for you to elect as president in November of 2008, particularly if they either use information which is not correct and do so on purpose, or they don’t know the correct information in the first place. You know, I personally don’t care whether a brain surgeon is a bad one, or whether he really doesn’t have the proper credentials. Either way he is not going to do brain surgery on me. And I am not going to sit back and let more presidential candidates erode the concepts of democracy to serve their own purposes without continually pointing out their misstatements and misconceptions. So to get back to Mitt Romney’s attempt to make all Muslims our enemies, let me put it this way. Mitt Romney is obviously making a major attempt to play down his Mormonism by kowtowing to the evangelical religious right who played such a strong part in helping George W. Bush to redefine political boundaries whilst attempting to take over the federal government single-handedly. Since we KNOW the fact that all Muslims are NOT OUR ENEMY, then we have a personal job to do. We have to figure out how to make those of a like mind to Romney’s asinine statement to use their own brains. This is particularly hard to do because they are evangelical Christians who believe that Muslims are indeed our enemy, and that by defeating the Muslim scourge Jesus Christ will return and the Rapture will bring all the faithful to God. Count on it, this is what they believe, and Mitt Romney wants them on his side so that he can become President. The same can be said for Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, so you can expect increased rhetoric towards the concept of our "Global War on Terror" really being a war of civilizations, but without actually saying that it is. In other words, they will continue to try to mislead you, to frighten you, to denigrate you if you disagree, to deride you if you disagree in front of them, all the while spouting lies they hope to explain away, or misleading statements they hope to make light of until they can say them again. President Bush just did this at a Rose Garden press conference last week when asked direct questions about his credibility to discuss the war in Iraq with America, bringing up the fearful image of a couple of the reporter’s children being directly attacked because they asked the questions they did. Now one can parse out his answer as being aimed at all of American children, but it only takes a moment to notice he did not mention threats to anyone else’s children based on the questions they asked. Personally, I think George W. Bush has been the greatest danger to America and her children, and any of those who would be president after him are trying to ride the "fear factor" coattails into the White House. So who’s more of a threat? OK, let’s just discuss the question for a moment. One fact we do know is that Al Qaeda is a threat, and they have no compunction about killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans. Hell, they have no problem killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of Muslims, whether it be by using people as suicide bombers, or blowing up movie houses in Kashmir, as happened early in 2002. In Kenya, 12 Americans were hurt, I believe, but 209 Kenyans were killed or maimed. If one doesn’t care whether their target is killed or not, then the level of their threat is indeed global and requires careful attention to penetration of the group and a decided effort at dismantling the reasons behind Al Qaeda’s successful efforts to continue to garner new recruits. For now we have a dangerous combination of factors, which is we know that the use of people in suicide attacks can and will take place, and we know that it really doesn’t matter to Al Qaeda’s uppermost echelon who dies. So we have a question to answer about this last little fact, and that is "What is Al Qaeda trying to achieve?" Now the current batch of Republican presidential candidates, except for Sen. Ron Paul, have the same stupid words coming out of their mouths, which is "They hate us for our Freedom." This is most decidedly the stupidest piece of analysis ever presented, because they are not attacking other countries having different levels of freedoms. So the answer given cannot be the correct answer. Senator Ron Paul apparently HAS read the history involving America’s foreign policy and involvement in the Middle East over the past 50+ years. And the fact is when Osama bin Laden tells us his efforts to bring down America are directly tied to America’s foreign policy, it is Osama bin Laden who is not lying to America. For all practical purposes it has been the American government lying to the American public time and time again over the years. The last President to NOT lie to the American public was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and that was when he gave his outgoing speech about the military-industrial complex. Prior to the end of World War II America did not have a military-industrial complex because we didn’t have a standing army. In fact, when WWII ended, we still didn’t have a standing army because we brought them all home and reintegrated them into society. OK, so we had a smaller number of standing army than during the war, but both Germany and Japan needed transition time to turn into world citizens again. Then suddenly we had a military-industrial complex that wished to exploit the economic advantages of having a country at war, large contingents of troops, and military bases throughout the free world. And this is when the true beginnings of the marriage of congress and the military-industrial complex came about through lobbying. So how does all of this play with what is happening today? Well, in 1953 the United States, through it’s newly created CIA, caused Iran’s democratically elected but left leaning President to be deposed in a coup, thus allowing the United States to prop up the Shah. Certainly this wasn’t the people of Iran’s will, so strong-arm tactics were necessary to maintain the Shah in power. What did we receive out of all of these efforts? Two things, at the least. The first was an inroad into the petroleum producing Middle East with an American backed leader of Iran. The second was the development of a long memory in the Iranian public. The prior produced immediate advantages for America in terms of gaining needed low cost petroleum production whilst garnering a large portion of the revenues. Since the Shah got a lot of money and companies from the United States and Britain got a lot of money, there really wasn’t too much money left for the population of Iran. And the Iranians didn’t, nor shouldn’t, forget America’s foreign policy. In 1979 as the Shah was ousted and the popular ex-patriot Ayatollah Khomeni returned, students decided that they wanted to get into the American embassy and find whatever records they could to prove that the United States had interfered with legal and democratic elections to the detriment of the Iranian people. Unfortunately 44 Americans didn’t leave the embassy as they were trying to destroy all the records, and they then became hostages. The rest is a history of distrust between not only the Iranian people and the government of America (not the American people, whom the Iranians like), but a history of such finagling by the Reagan Administration in all of it’s dealings with the Middle East, that as Reagan might be crowed as the one to end Communism, he must also be declared the real reason behind the terrorism of today. And how not? America has chosen to be an "ally" of Israel when Israel itself has declined to sign any protectionist pact. To the military-industrial complex Israel is a large consumer, and conflicts involving people in the Middle East can easily and quickly be instigated, for certainly there are no shortages of protagonists in the Middle East. More money, more money. Just one year ago Israel chose to initiate another war against Hezbollah, which is a legally elected portion of the Lebanon government. And that’s not real surprising to me, but what is surprising is how quickly the American military-industrial complex was able to RE-SUPPLY Israel with armaments. It seems as if someone was awfully prescient to know that Israel would need a new supply of these weapons for the armaments to have so quickly beome available. Just how long does shipping of massive tonnage of weapons take by sea? Seems there was no ramp up time necessary for production, and virtually no time necessary at all for Israel to receive armaments neither normally in production nor held in inventory. As has been noted in numerous news articles, one of Israel’s own terrorist actions is to demolish the homes of "suspected terrorists" in the Palestinian terroritories. One of the greatest gripes by the Lebanese population about Israel’s efforts against Hezbollah were about the armaments being used. We’re not talking about normal run of the mill bombs, but highly accurate yet incredibly devastating bombs whose casing was built to break apart in large chunks of metal fragments big enough and packed with enough power to break the steel and concrete structure of a building and bring it to the ground. And bombs don’t care whether a terrorist is in the building, or an 11-year-old girl hiding from the fighting on the streets. This is not a weapon one would use to fight a skirmish between some factions of Hezbollah and the Israelis army, but a effort to bring Lebanon to it’s knees by devastating Lebanon’s infrastructure as well as rout the population. In a movie joke Hezbollah would be "Stupid. Always bringing a knife to a gun fight." In Iraq we have another long history dating from the Reagan Administration, which directly pitted Iraq against Iran whilst negotiating with "terrorists" in Iran to supply weapons in order to gain the hostages freedom. All of the time Reagan was President, the mindset he informed Americans about is that "We don’t negotiate with terrorists", and yet his election team was negotiating with the "terrorists" in Iran in order to ensure his own election. Then when it came down to supporting his favorite "rightist vs. leftist" Central American battle, again with a democratically elected government, Reagan’s people negotiated with Iran to supply weapons (once again) and took the funds and gave them to the Contras. President Reagan’s appointed people robbed hundreds of millions of dollars from the American treasury by clandestine operations forwarding weapons to Israel who then forwarded these same weapons to Iran. Rather than that money be funneled back into the American treasury, it went to the Contras, with a large number of dollars being siphoned off by a gun running middleman like Manucher Ghorbanifar, who apparently still has inroads into the White House with George W. Bush. Elliot Abrams, a Reagan appointee was indicted for lying in Congressional hearings for his Iran-Contra work (pleading guilty to a couple of lesser offenses), and who was pardoned by ex-President George H. W. Bush, is currently Deputy National Security Adviser for George W. Bush, as I recall. So if history plays a part in the way the Muslim world views us, then it must be how history shows us from the start to the finish, and the fundamentalist now know we don’t hold our own accountable for their actions. Now here’s an example of playing both sides part of our foreign policy. While Reagan’s people were taking money from illicit weapons sales to Iran and giving it to the Contras (which Congress had ordered would get no more money from America), we were selling weapons to this new guy in Iraq named Saddam Hussein. And not just planes, bombs and missiles, but precursors to chemical and biological weapons. As has been bandied about before, the reason we knew that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction is that we still have the receipts. America has such a large footprint upon the world that our massive military might can be in any corner of the world anywhere from 15 minutes with nuclear missiles to 8 hours with troops on the ground and circling AWAC command and control systems. We can fly bombing missions from the United States to Afghanistan non-stop and have our flight crews home late the next day. We have bases in some 100 plus countries. We’ve only left the Philippines and Panama after gaining a foothold. And both of those countries weren’t key players because our technology allows us to fly missions to South America within 8 to 12 hours, and Japan and South Korea, along with Guam and Midway allow us military might in the Asian theater within a couple of hours. We no longer need the Panama canal to fight a war and the Philippines could be bombed into submission in a matter of hours. Diego Garcia allows us quick response to the other areas of the far east, and it appears that we are planning to have a large footprint in Iraq with the addition of four major bases. These bases could easily house tens of thousands of soldiers and airmen, along with armaments enough to decimate the world. We currently have bases in countries previously inside of the Iron Curtain and Russia knows it. Uzbekistan, Germany, and numerous smaller Balkan states all have American installations or military bases. Numerous other countries are willfully hiding illegal detention centers. America is poised for worldwide domination and apparently some people don’t like the idea. Certainly the idea of the current administration and its neo-con friends doesn’t match up to the preamble to the United Nations. We are apparently here to make your day our day. So who’s lying to whom? Osama bin Laden when he wants America’s nose out of other people’s state of affairs, or America’s government who has all the preparations ready to … well, you finish the sentence. All I ask is that you remember all of this when you stand in the voting booth in November 2008 and contemplate just which candidate matches your idea of what America means. Not what the candidates tell you it means. What you grew up with, what you learned in school, and how it makes you feel to know that someone else wants to hurt you and you don’t know why because the government won’t tell you the truth. All of the truth is out there. Your duty as a citizen is to determine just what that truth is. 12:37:38 PM    comment []

Friday, May 18, 2007

Today’s Topic: My Country Right or Wrong The obvious thing is that one cannot support their country as a patriot if their country’s policies are wrong.  Hence the 60’s statement above holds no real qualitative assessment of a government other than blind acceptance and calling it "patriotism", which is what the current crop of Presidential Candidates would like you to think.  And I mean from both sides. The Constitution of the United States of America is probably the most profound organization of checks and balances prescribed for any government in existence today, yet we have some serious problems. As exhibited by the culmination of one party holding power in both houses of congress and the executive, the concept of checks and balances seems to go by the wayside. What we are seeing is something that can only be described as a level of recombination of powers, whilst what we’ve seen over the past six years can only be described as nefarious. When politics describes and dictates policy, only those who hold power hold sway and the masses have no voice. Without a voice, virtually all of the Bill of Rights is down the drain. Any real patriot would be concerned. Any government who held the people in respect would never place the governed into such a position. The concept of America isn’t all that hard to understand. It was defined in the Declaration of Independence and brought to fruition with the Constitution. The process of democracy is slow and tedious, purposely designed so that full and complete debate on issues brought forth a consensus leading to the best advantages for the most people most of the time. What can be seen with the past six years of this administration is the culmination of the dumbing down of America by the far right in order to establish a type of government that goes beyond anything in the history of America. And this is why it is taking so long to re-establish the proper balance. Obviously the neo-cons do not understand that the balance of the physical body works for governments too. It is not unsurprising that the Bush administration is falling apart before our eyes. They have transgressed upon the laws of freedom by ignoring the people the country was designed to help. The neo-cons took upon themselves to try to make the world over in their view of what democracy is whilst taking democracy away from the very people that gave them the power. As far as I know, no one elected George W. Bush so that dissenters could be caged and still have the government call that caging a 1st Amendment Right. But what I really wanted to talk about is something presented at the latest Republican Presidential Debate in South Carolina this past Tuesday. When Senator Ron Paul spoke truth to the nation about why Al Qaeda felt it reasonable to attack us, Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed just how much of world affairs he doesn’t know. The standard for the Republican Party is based on how radical Muslims hate us for our freedom, yet when Ron Paul told the truth about how this country and Britain had been continually warring with Iraq with the unsanctified "No Fly Zones", Giuliani had nothing to do but play stupid and yet he received a rousing round of applause. It appears that Rudy also played stupid after the WTC attacks of 1993 and assumed that no radical Muslim group would attempt to follow up. After the 1993 attack Rudy did nothing to assure that the World Trade Towers would not again be attacked, and had the awful foresight to place New York City’s Emergency Response Center right smack dab in the middle of ground zero. Perhaps he should have chosen WTC6, but then we have to wonder whether WTC6 would have free fallen with no cause. WTC6 wasn’t damaged at all and yet WTC7 fell in upon itself 7 hours after both towers fell. Now some may say that he wasn’t at fault for his lack of forethought, but if one looks at the entire situation one can only say that there was probably no other location Rudy could have chosen that would have been so susceptible to attack than the area he chose. If terrorists have taken the time to try to bring down a building perhaps the most intelligent thing to do would be to place your command and control system in some other location, least your building fall down around you. There are miles upon miles of old unused subway tunnels under the streets of Manhattan. Perhaps someone should look at an Emergency Response Center that is somewhat hardened against attack. You don’t need windows when you are under attack. You need a level of shock hardening that supports the ability to respond to an emergency, not become part of the emergency. There are still unanswered questions about why WTC 7 did a free fall collapse when no major threat to this steel structured building had occurred. And yet Rudy chose this particular building? And don’t get it wrong. Rudy Giuliani specifically chose WTC7. There is no lackey somewhere upon which to foist the blame. I recall that Rudy also had a problem with Yassar Arafat, refusing to sit at a New York Opera presentation whilst a "terrorist and murdered" was seated at the same event. Apparently Rudy doesn’t know that much about world history and Menachim Begin’s complicity in bombing a hotel which was a British stronghold in 1946 Palestine. Even with repeated warnings about a bomb being planted the British chose not to evacuate and suffered 96 dead. Regardless the bombing was an Israeli terrorist attack. So who is the terrorist now? Yassar Arafat or Menachim Begin? Or perhaps the British or even the Americans? The point is that Rudy obviously doesn’t know who the players are. Which brings us to another question. How much control does the state of Israel exert over the United States? It seems that America is more than content to suppose that we have an agreement with Israel, which would amount to a treaty, but no treaty has been signed between the two countries. Israel is not our ally and they refused to sign a reciprocal defense treaty offered by every administration since the 1948 creation of Israel. Yet every President has treated the Israelis as if they were somehow protected by the hand of God and an automatic ally requiring American military support. When Senator Ron Paul told the crowd in South Carolina that the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 had explained their reason, Giulani went for the cheap shot rather than discuss just what the problem really is. Ron Paul is correct. Osama bin Laden did specifically say the reason for the attack was to gain notoriety so they could get their message across. Their message? They simply wanted American troops out of Saudi Arabia, a place that holds a number of sacred religious locations. The concept of "infidels" occupying the lands of Mohammed was more than they felt they could endure. I’m not saying they were right or wrong. I’m saying that, as Sun Tzu said, if you do not understand your enemy you are doomed to fail in a war against them. Even a general from 4,000 years ago understood that one has to have a complete and full understanding of the motives of an enemy in order to see why they are the enemy. Osama bin Laden has never been political but he understands politics. His statements continue to be his view of the truth and if our potential presidents don’t understand someone who speaks as plainly as bin Laden, then they don’t deserve to be President. As some may recall, bin Laden suggested to Americans that a new methodology of dealing with the world was necessary and George W. Bush wasn’t the man to do the job. We now know how this administration played up our fears and used this statement to their advantage, which has turned out not to be to the advantage of America at all. And it shows just how plying politics as policy is a bad concept. This goes for anyone regardless of party affiliations. America’s "National Interests" are not the reason to ignore or denigrate other countries, and certainly not the reason to strike supposed enemies with pre-emptive war. It’s funny because President Reagan, the man the Republican Party holds to such lofty levels, once said "we do not negotiate with terrorists" and yet even during his initial election cycles he was negotiating with terrorists. The Iran-Contra affair doesn’t just suggest that Reagan was negotiating with terrorists, it shows beyond any reasonable doubt that he was negotiating with terrorists, along with subverting the Constitution and defying the will of the people by ignoring laws passed by Congress. Does any of this sound familiar? Perhaps with a President who isn’t quite so remote? And I’m not going to say it just happens with Republican Presidents, but since we’ll have had 20 out of the last 28 years with Republican Presidents, one has to wonder. Actually, one doesn’t have to wonder. Under Ronald Reagan the efforts of dumbing down America became a process, and under George W. Bush, that process has come to fruition, ripe with scandal and profiteering during the under funded "No Child Left Behind" years. The Republican Party has shown itself to be the most detrimental element of America’s move into the 21st Century. Now I can’t say that the Democrats are any better. After decades of power they didn’t purport themselves any better than the current batch of Republicans have. So if you work through the logic, it isn’t what political party is in power, but rather a fundamental problem with the way America projects itself onto the world of today. John F. Kennedy didn’t have anything to do with the invasion of Cuba other than to deny the CIA military backup and yet he still allowed working projects from his predecessor to overshadow his own good judgement. The point of all of this is that Americans have to be more invested in their government and realize that they, in fact, ARE the government. This is not a joke. Our elected officials are just that and nothing more. President Bush didn’t become a Messiah because he became President. He chose that mantle and a lot of people bought the product. But look at where this lack of concern for our own country has gotten us over the past 28 years. Voting for a new president doesn’t allow everyone to simply ignore all that goes on during the interim periods. Having a voice in the governing of our country is not a right, it is a requirement placed upon us by the Constitution and vigilance is our duty. So when the people vying for power, like Rudy Giuliani, tell us that we are being attacked because the enemy doesn’t like our way of life, beware. For you are being lied to yet again and this country will never again hold its place as a nation amongst nations if our elected officials don’t truly understand the nature of the threat. Or even more succinctly, if our people allow themselves to be bamboozled into believing the wrong assessment of that threat. VIGILANCE IS OUR DUTY. We should not expect our governmental officials to protect us. Rather we should be prepared to do ANYTHING NECESSARY to protect our Constitutional government. Anyone that tells you he will protect you is lying. He/she won’t protect you. They will protect themselves whilst continuing to bring our Constitutional government down around our heads. 8:40:48 AM    comment []

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Today’s Topic: McCain’s Inability to Lead As a Vet, I still applaud John McCain’s service to this country, both in his military career and his political service on Capitol Hill. But I have some serious problems with his views and his statements on Meet the Press today, and they justify my concern. Essentially, since I don’t know how to take shorthand, he brought up the thought that he alone has the experience and the knowledge of how to run the war in Iraq, even as he is espousing the same rhetoric as George W. Bush. As much as I don’t like the idea of somehow being seen as a McCain basher, I’d just like to say that there is NOTHING in John McCain’s history, either as a Navy pilot nor a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, or even as part of the American political institution which suggests that he knows or has experience in directing a war. His claim to fame from his Viet Nam service comes from being held prisoner for 5 years, which doesn’t give one a lot of experience in tactics nor strategy. Even prior to being a prisoner, he was simply a pilot amongst a number of pilots, all of whom had orders to fulfill based on tactics developed by others under a strategy developed by people even more remotely attached to the war. Senator McCain talked about his view of history in response to a question from Tim Russert, the answer of which flies in the face of the reality of history. Specifically, after hearing a statement by an Army General about insurgents historically never being beaten on their own territory, Senator McCain likened the insurgency in Iraq being left to the Iraqis as a neighborhood being assaulted by gangs and drug dealers. His statement represents his own lack of knowledge of just how America works, because historically it has been the neighborhood who has fought to bring their neighborhoods back. No amount of outside intervention has ever proven successful without the expressed approval and direct involvement of the neighborhood. History has given us a high level of exactitude in the facts, and the facts are that no one can be freed unless they themselves are involved with that fight for freedom. Whether it is a drug or gang infested inner city neighborhood with people trying to live their lives on their own streets, or whether it is the concept of an insurrection born of the same type of inner city neighborhoods in Iraq under the perceived oppression of an invasive military force. When added to his statements about knowing more about what is at stake than his constituents, the polls of which support withdrawal of our troops, then one has to question whether he is showing leadership, or failing to recognize that a leader only has the ability to lead when there are people willing to follow. And speaking of following, if anyone is following John McCain’s performance in the Senate of late, one will notice that he has missed somewhere around 43% of the votes. Yet somehow he seemed to find the time and the ability to come up with high dollar tickets for the Mayweather/De La Hoya fight on May 5th, sitting one row behind front and slightly off to the side of Chris Matthews. Now I admit that anyone with the wherewithal to afford front row or at least ringside seats at the most touted boxing match in history is up to those people willing to pay. Chris makes his money via his not uncluttered work schedule yet still seems to get his job done. How McCain came to be ringside and yet still finds ways to be absent for 43% of his Senate votes is beyond me. If you boil it down to the condensed version then John McCain isn’t doing the job he was elected to do almost half the time. The other point is that he obviously isn’t paying attention to over half of his current state constituents nor his improbable future national constituents. I don’t see where John McCain is doing his job at all, much less the claims for his credentials to become the President. The Straight Talk Express is neither this time around. 11:47:27 AM    comment []

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Today’s Topic: Terrorists vs. Terrorism Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani spoke the other day professing that the Republicans were the ones to protect Americans and the Democrats were the ones whose elections would equate to dead people on the streets of America. I’ve written about this before, and apparently I’m going to have to continue to write about it, but the fact is that no president is required to protect the people of America, but by oath of office, the Constitution of America. What we are perceiving here is the penultimate of the Republican strategy to garner a one party system in America and it is based on lies and misdirection. As I was watching Bill Maher’s "Real Time" show this week it brought to mind the concept that anyone can be a terrorist, as was shown by a young man at Virginia Tech this past week. Since everyone knows the circumstances, it’s obvious that anyone can employ the mechanisms of terrorism and become a terrorist, even in the mainstream of a great country like the United States. Which brings us to the questions asked by student’s parents about where the school administration was in helping to guarantee the safety of the 32 students that died hours after the initial killings took place. One can only say that they were playing it safe, supposedly for the safety of the students, and yet we see that no administration can predict the actions of terrorists and thus cannot guarantee the safety of anyone. Sure, it is possible that VA Tech could have shut down the school, but in the face of a determined attack one cannot guarantee shit except that the attack will go on until the attacker is killed. However, actions against a terrorist requires knowledge about the particular terrorist. Surprise is the one advantage a terrorist has, or even a terrorist group. But the fact that a terrorist can inflict smaller amounts of damage amongst the people thus causing fear amongst the rest is what terrorism is all about. The young man who instigated the shootings at VA Tech was a terrorist, not by virtue of being a member of some organization, but by his desire to instill terror in the hearts of the students of that institution with the simple killing people and I mean as many people as possible. One also has to question the response to a situation to judge whether the response is in equilibrium with the actions. This administration has taken extreme and deceitful steps in garnering American backing for actions that lie far outside of the norm. Was Afghanistan the initiation point of 9/11? Well, it is apparent that this is what the administration would like you to think, but when they can divert your attention to Iraq with lies, then why would anyone believe what they said in the first place? Why believe an administration when they lied from the beginning? Why accept the concept that a terrorist organization becomes a reason to fight a war on terrorism without the truth coming out? How can anyone judge? Whom do we believe? And what level of terrorism is permissible when our own government lies to the first responders of 9/11 by telling them no problems would be incurred because of the air pollutants due to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and WTC7. There are still too many questions unanswered about the 9/11 occurrences, much less to simply accept the concept of attacking countries where no intelligence suggests complicity. Of all the information available about what brought down the World Trade Towers and WTC7, the most important is not that Boeing 757s crashed into the towers, but rather that no steel structured buildings in history have ever been brought down by either airplane crashes or burning kerosene. Kerosene simply doesn’t burn hot enough to even weaken today’s construction steel much less have catastrophic failure of the steel structure. Yet we only have, in all of steel structure history, three buildings that have supposedly been brought down in virtual freefall from 800 degree fires when steel doesn’t even begin to weaken until 1800 degrees. And those three buildings are all of those brought down on 9/11. No where else have any steel structured buildings totally come down from a fire. The tested strength of the twin towers steel structure can be researched by viewing the NIST report on 9/11. Back to the original premise of Rudy Guliani about Republicans keeping Americans safe and Democrats equaling death for American citizens, then one would have to suppose that the entire administration and security forces of VA Tech were Democrats. Some might offer up that this is a disingenuous offer of proof against the Republicans, but the fact is that it is proof that terrorists acts cannot always be deterred by the authorities because there is no conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. It is a terrorist act of one man. And if one can extrapolate the concept that terrorism means terrorist acts, then one should be able to extrapolate the concept that a terrorist act doesn’t necessarily mean an act of international terrorism. The functional aspect of all of this is that terrorism and terrorists are not necessarily connected at the hip. All people that commit terrorism are terrorists, but the fact is that all terrorists, such as the young man with a mental problem at VA Tech wasn’t involved with terrorism. Surprisingly enough this administration made note of that fact, also including that this was not a time to debate the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This action alone suggests that the federal government doesn’t have a true grasp on what constitutes terrorism and how to define a terrorist. A good example of this is Rudi Guliani’s refusal to be seated with Yassar Arrafat during the Palestinian leader’s attendance at an opera in NY City, whilst he had no problems with being seated at the same venue with Ariel Sharon. Rudi’s statement was that he wouldn’t be seated with a terrorist, and yet Ariel Sharon’s appearance at just the same type of event was perfectly ok with Rudi. The Israeli-American ties go well beyond the treaty obligations of nations since Israel and the United States of America are not treaty bound to protect each other. This fact bears some thought. For if America is not treaty bound to protect Israel, then why is Israel our "friend"? Why treat Israel as a treated partner in the world when they refused to accept any offerings from the United States on cross protections? Would it possibly be that they knew they’d be dictating American policy towards Israel and yet they’d not have to respond to attacks against America? The truth is simple. It is far less expensive to support your efforts in a country where lobbyist have the ability to write laws and define policy. How else can our infatuation with Israel be defined, for without proper signatories to treaty obligations one has to wonder why this administration would sit and wait until Lebanon was again reduced to rubble before negotiations of any sort would ensue. Seems that the Israelis made no efforts to distinguish themselves vocally or militarily when America was attacked, just as it seems that Israel was given extreme latitude to attack Lebanon indiscriminately with American produced and hastily re-supplied weapons. Who is the patsy here? And it seems that they weren’t all that worried about dealing with Iran during the Iran-Contra years of President Reagan. Weapons for hostages and all that. Jeez, perhaps we’ve been backing a bad horse in the horserace? The point is that terrorism is an action taken by people of opposing ideologies whilst a terrorist is someone that takes those actions against a specific people for their ideologies. Mostly terrorism never comes about when people are treated like people. Almost always terrorists arises from circumstances where people are treated like dogs or worse. Even in Darfur, where a current pogrom of despotism is taking place and the eradication of an entire people is being watched by the eyes of the world, these downtrodden people will ultimately resort to terrorism to regain their freedoms. The fact in the world is that all countries ultimately deal with terrorists because they have no choice. Britain had no choice with the IRA, France had no choice in Algeria, and we have no choice but to deal with terrorism on the most basic levels of why terrorists are terrorists, and they will ultimately have to deal with coming into the 21st Century by dealing with us. 50 years of Palestinian strife tells us that only conflict will continue in a world where conflict is not confronted with dialog. And Rudi, tell me this. Why were you willing to dump your Emergency Response Management facility in a building that hadn’t been hit by an airplane or major amounts of airplane shrapnel? Why, 5 hours after the collapse of both WTC towers did WTC7 collapse without any major damage? Why did the order to dispose of the WTC rubble preclude forensic study? How is it that 5 years later we have human remains, picked bare by birds and flies, found on the roofs of additional undamaged buildings? How is it that America has watched tens of buildings demolished by demolition teams throughout the United States and the world, and yet not recognize that buildings in free fall were not brought down by terrorist acts? Republicans equaling life? Democrats equaling death? Fuck off Rudi. When you brought organized crime to its knees I applauded. When you infringed on the people’s rights in order to bring down crime, I admonished you. When you lied to the people of New York, I had hoped that you were done for, but now your ugly head rises again to follow the avenue of fear by which this current administration has fucked up the country. Perhaps the idea is to soften us up with outside terrorist attacks and then have the fait accompli delivered by a new administration. Go away Rudi. Go Away. 5:11:55 PM    comment []

Friday, April 20, 2007

Peak Oil The people that belie the concept of Peak Oil have only one question to answer. How is it that America was the leading exporter of oil for 100 years and now virtually has none? Peak Oil has happened, even if the overall perception is that the effects of Peak Oil won’t be seen for another 50 years. The problem is that no new serious oil fields have been found for some 30 years throughout the world, and only the extreme rise in dollars per gallon here in the United States have increased the big oil coffers enough to explore the option to return to old fields where the dollar value of technology development exceeded the ability to easily pull dollars out of the ground. The problem with the concept of Peak Oil is that our leaders in government should have known about this as the prediction of Peak Oil has been around since the 1930s. And the fact is that it should be obvious to anyone with a brain. If you cut down the edge of a forest, forever clearing land for growing foodstuffs, then at some point you will run out of forest to cut down. And the real likelihood is that you will only be able to cut down so much of the forest because others are cutting down those same forests from different places on the extremities and you’ll all end up somewhere without a forest to cut down. Now whether you use that wood for purposes of industry, the forest woodlands are indeed finite, as are gold, diamonds, uranium, fish, cattle, or whatever. If the desire to strip a world of its resources exceeds the needs of the people, then the end result is the same. Another example could easily be seen in the decimation of the buffalo in North America as the whites moved in. Now I’m not going to say that all of the problems in the world today are because of the whites that moved into "manifest destiny" during the building of America, but I will say that there are points that would seem to indicate certain propensities towards waste in a country that believes the resources are inextinguishable. So once the people are on board with the concept of having something for next to nothing, it is easy to move into the next subject about how the American government and corporate industries have colluded to deny our children the ability to maintain the same level of life as we. But the problem really comes down to the fact that Americans have been lied to for over 100 years, and here is how. In 1887 a statement by Supreme Court Justice White, prior to any arguments of a corporation’s rights as people or the denial of their rights as people, gave rise to a Supreme Court designation of corporations as having the rights of a person. I have argued against this designation, and I am adamant about the fact that never was the question raised about a corporation having the rights of a person, but still we have a decision made without argument before the court. Now what is funny about this (and not funny ha ha) is that no question of the rights of corporations as opposed to a person had ever raised its ugly head in court. What happened that made the question so prevalent that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the rights of people when the question had never been asked? The wide acceptance of oil and its incorporation into the technologies being developed at the time. America was still expanding and needed lubrication for the mechanisms that allowed stream locomotives to travel from coast to coast, or more appropriately, for commerce to travel from coast to coast. Oil was far more readily available than whale blubber, so what question needs to be asked about that? Pretty much the rest of the world didn’t even know about oil until our oil company engineers went out into the world exploring. By the First World War oil had already become a matter of contention. 15 years after the treaty of Versailles Hitler was making deals with potentates of the Middle East to provide oil for the Nazi war machine. I don’t believe that there is a historian alive that wouldn’t have to admit to the technological advancements in that hundred year span in America was based on the cheap production of oil. Nor would they contest the idea that oil became a major player in World War II, although Hitler and his henchmen had some pretty slow reactions to their valuation of oil in the future world, opting rather strongly for hoarding treasure with immediate value, such as gold, property and works of art. Hitler’s real downfall was his henchmen’s efforts to become immediate members of European aristocracy rather than planning for the long run. Oil made the machines run, but the collusion of international corporations with Nazi Germany paved the way towards property resource grabs, international investment, and secret banking transactions with inroads to the American elite such as Prestcott Bush, current American President George W. Bush’s own grandfather. And now that I’ve brought up dubya, would somebody tell me please about how a Texas oilman doesn’t understand the concept of Peak Oil, particularly since most Texan oil fields lie unproductive and have for 30 years? Let’s face it, Bush started his life as an oilman when American oil was virtually already gone. Boy does this man have bad luck or what? If there is any politician who should know and understand about Peak Oil it is George W. Bush. Ultimately he had to resort to borrowing money from Harken’s pension fund to make any money at all and that was buying into a baseball team who’s new stadium was approved by whom? Well, by George W. Bush as Governor of Texas. Damn it’s a small little world. But all of this brings up the next subject, which is corporate collusion with government to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers and even directly lie to them about the seriousness and consequences of America’s actions in garnering control of the world’s resources.   Corporate Collusion The concept of corporate collusion with government isn’t all that distant in America’s history, but was most recently pointed up by Dwight David Eisenhower’s Presidential outgoing speech to America about the perils of the Military-Industrial Complex. His concern has now become a prevalent problem that threatens to sink the American ship of state as totally as a 100-foot rogue wave will sink an oil tanker. As I mentioned in the previous section, this bright marriage of corporation and government initially precluded the average American from making anything of their lives, often forcing these into what essentially was indentured servitude, complete with company stores, forced housing and working conditions so barbaric it is a serious blemish on the American way of life. Certainly working in mines for 12 hours a day with only a canary to warn of dangerous circumstances had resulted with hundreds or thousands of death without so much as a thank you to the wives and family of the dead. In fact, without a working individual at the mine, the survivors were further victimized by being thrown out into the streets without income or a place to live. Live wasn’t brutal for the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilt but it was for all of their employees. The robber barons got that name because they earned it. Virtually all of America’s elite are robber barons, even the Kennedy clan and the Bush family. They all came to wealth via suspicious activities and support for governmental efforts that helped continue their way of life. There is no American dream. Period. The last fulfillment of the American Dream is Bill Gates and his philanthropy. No one is going to make millions of dollars on a worthwhile idea anymore. They may get bought out for millions of dollars, but the likelihood of actually having the world benefit from their accomplishments is pretty far down the line for the America we see today. 37% of all American children don’t have insurance and won’t receive medical attention when it is necessary. 47 million Americans are so far below the poverty level that they don’t even have the documentation to get state or federal help. And these same people are allowed to vote, but they might just be sidelined in their ability to vote by a Republican administration that supports corporations over the people, the federal courts over the state, and the state courts over the people. Doesn’t sound much like a government by the people, of the people and for the people to me. How not? Well, I can’t raise millions of dollars to get my representatives for government elected, so how does my vote count? And if my vote were supposed to count, then why has this administration been supporting corrupt officials and their collusion with defense contractors such as Duke Cunningham? And this barrel hasn’t even been delved into before the administration decides that some U. S. Attorneys have to go. Why are there billions of dollars of "no bid" contracts with Haliburton and KRB, SAIC, Blackwater and such when the basis of all federal contracting has previously been the ability to support competitiveness based on any and all companies the ability to bid on federal government contracts? My recollection of the last bid awarded contract was based on the Joint Strike Force fighter jet. I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about this administration offering up contracts for bid in terms of providing personal body armor to our troops nor ramping up production of Striker based protection of our troops in HumVees. The consequences of our government’s being in bed with our industries is killing our military, not expanding the military abilities. Every step this administration has made is a culmination of 30 years of lobby support for certain outcomes, including the religious right and the military-industrial complex. Marry them together and you get a Lt. General expounding about how our Christian nation has "a stronger god than your god." But the most prominent factor exposing the government-corporate collusion is the inability of the government to stand up for the American people, leaving us with Medicare Plan D and rising costs to the American people. Or the inability of our people to express through elections that we don’t agree with a sitting President and still have to put up with him doing the same stupid thing over and over again. These are your sons and daughters. You should be able to decide. Now that I think about it, there is even on further thing that negates you from obtaining the American dream. And that is corporate influence on their employees. I had previously written that corporate America had two votes for every one of the American people, but now I have to admit that they have three. They have the ability to influence elections by corporate involvement with those elections, either in dollars or in terms of guaranteeing elections when their company is the deciding factor in vote counting. The have the ability to influence elections by the actions of their shareholders. And the have the ability to influence elections by intimidating their employees to vote for their candidates. An American citizen can only vote once, but the corporations can focus the vote at three different levels. All without any interference from the federal government. And yet this administration wishes you to believe that the Justice Department is above partisan chicanery when they are indeed supplying partisan political proponents in positions of authority. Voter Fraud? How about taking a good look at the last two American national elections? One shouldn’t discount the CEO of Diebold guaranteeing the Ohio election to George Bush in early 2004 either. Perhaps the elite should keep their mouths shut, but like the terrorists that George Bush is supposedly fighting right now, the corporate shills cannot keep their mouths shut. That is, supposing that they aren’t tortured. Pride is hard to conceal. And if you think there were no corporate collusions in 2000 or 2004, I’d suggest you look at the banks of Republican lawyers used in contesting vote counts. Even with a bank of lawyers on call for the 2004 election John Kerry didn’t call them into action. Was John Kerry a pussy? I don’t think so. I think he understood the concept of the American dream. Only history will tell us if John Kerry understood such a concept, but one thing is true. If you believe in your hearts that George W. Bush won a second term then look at his face on the tapes during the election. Bush obviously knew something was going wrong. George W. Bush won the election in the wee hours of the night in a state that was one hour behind those of us on the East Coast. How is it that it took until the last minute at 2 AM for Bush to be declared the winner? Perhaps because most people were asleep and didn’t question the election results like they did after the Florida fiasco in 2000 in the light of a conscious America. And one has to wonder just how Fox News became the bearer of the news that Bush had won Florida in 2000 when Gore had already been declared by the rest of the media. Fox News? The bastion of Republican Party policy? Jeez, just how did that work? Resource Conflict There are resource conflicts throughout American history, but the most prominent are those of modern days. And truthfully these conflicts don’t always include Americans either personal or governmental. Conflict diamonds come to mind, but that becomes the same level of foreword thinking I attached to the Nazis in their efforts to establish a new European aristocracy. Most countries with valuable resources will end up with resource conflicts, whether it is gold, diamonds, oil or water. In case you didn’t know, fresh water has become a valuable resource, possibly far ahead of its time because of the bottled water syndrome, but the fact is that any resource can easily become a reason for conflict. China has a problem with fresh water because of their industrialized over-exuberance, but North Korea is so low on the industrialized totem pole that they can’t even light a city after dark. How long before China realizes that their only close source of viable drinking water comes from their communist neighbor? Another aspect is global warming. How long before countries become entangled in wars based on the ability to feed their people if global warming isn’t brought to its knees soon? Countries, including the United States, are already betting on global warming and are vying for their claims from their borders to the North Pole, which actually works out to Russia having the most exploitable area in the northern hemisphere. Canada has the second most vast area of expansion, but the United States only has the small area above Alaska to demand control over. When governments are already betting on global warming by making contingencies means that they aren’t making decisions that benefit the people, but decisions that benefit those who would benefit from the exploitation and sales of said areas. End Game The end game of all of these shenanigans is that the American people have allowed a schism to develop between those who claim others are "elite" and those making the claims, who are really the "elite". How could anyone forget Barbara Bush’s statement that most of the people in the Houston Astrodome were "better off being there" than having the opportunities to be in their homes in New Orleans after Katrina. The smirking laugh after the statement really tells the tale. For any that continue to believe that the Republican chant of liberal elitism please pay attention. The majority of the people you back for office in the federal government are well to do, have no compunctions about bashing the opposition, and are not willing to answer for their actions. If one cannot see that by now then I hold very little hope for you as a person of compassion or hope. If what you want is a continuation of the above then continue what you have been doing, but believe me, Rome will have lasted 4 times as long as America if the best we can do is bend to the will of the true elite. Truth be told once again, there are no welfare queens, and if there are to be they’d probably be your parents trying to make ends meet in their old age without jobs to bolster their own well-being. Truth be told, your government isn’t working for you if they are working for corporations unless you hold massive amounts of stock in those corporations. Truth be told, you will not see the Rapture because it isn’t anything even closely associated with the New Testament. Truth be told, you don’t have the knowledge to home school your children and give them any type of advantage in the world. If you can, more power to you but then you should be a school teacher and try to make a living on $30k a year. Truth be told, the end game is that there is no end game. After all of this Bush administration stuff passes, at some point along the way the negatives will be negated and positives put in their place. Or they won’t and your world will die just like the rest of us, held down, unable to have our votes count by political and corporate malfeasance, and the best you can do is kiss your grandchildren goodbye, because you certainly didn’t leave them anything to work with. 3:16:02 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Today’s Topic: Using Democracy and a Militia This is going to be a short one, I hope. I have to admit that I was finally impressed with the people of Iraq when they stood 10s of thousands strong against the occupation of Iraq by American forces. Now I know that the Bush administration has turned the spin towards something positive of the efforts to provide democracy to Iraq, but the fact is that the positive spin actually comes from the people of Iraq in recognizing that democracy means taking matters into their own hands to redress grievances against the power in control. What this equates to is the people of Iraq redressing grievances against the United States of America, and it is most certainly time for a couple of things to happen. One is that President Bush needs to forget about the idea of a "surge" being a change in strategy. It is only a change in tactics. One actually has to have a strategy in order to be able to change the strategy. Two is that if the American people are to accept the protests against American occupation then Moktata al Sadr must make up his mind about how he’s going to play this. Using the people to protest the occupation whilst still wielding guns to kill Sunni and even Shia who oppose more secular violence must stop. Either Sadr has the will of the people for his heart felt convictions or he has the fear of those who would oppose his actions. This is a case where one circumstance cannot be consistent with the other. If the Iraqi people don’t like America bringing democracy at the end of a gun, then obviously Sadr cannot do the same. So either the Iraqi people marching in that protest were coerced into an action that assumed a democratic platitude, and they did so in fear of their lives, or they truly believe in the message, ipso facto Sadr no longer needs weapons and a militia to support his vision of a future Iraq. The only way to know the truth about the situation is for Sadr to eliminate the militia and allow the world to see what the Iraqi people actually want. Without eliminating the militia even the world will ignore the rights of the Iraqi people to a life of freedom of expression and a voice in the operation of their government. And the Bush administration needs to heed that voice if it is given under a true choice just as it needs to heed the American people who have said in very loud terms that his decisions about the American efforts in Iraq are not supported by a vast majority. If somehow the people of Iraq can throw down their weapons and tell George W. Bush that they aren’t going to allow the fighting of this war anymore, and the American people tell George W. Bush that we will not allow the continued killing of innocent civilians and active patriots (insurgents), then if this President doesn’t listen, I pretty much guarantee that the process of impeaching the entire Bush administration will begin. The solution is so simple as to be oblivious to most. If all sides stop fighting of their own free will, and this administration becomes obvious in their desire to continue fighting, then the bad guys become known. If it turns out to be our government, then the American people need to know this right now.  And the positive is that if the foreign nationals fighting America in Iraq continue, as they will, then those people become known.  If they go away, then what concern are they? War is the concept that America is fighting to support.  Peace is a concept foreign to the contractors and military industries that require war to make a profit.  These corporate managers have no reason to desire peace. The peaceful end to the Iraq war is to simply lay down the arms and stop fighting. At that point the Al Qaeda operatives will become highly visible and Iraq might be saved from years of religious civil war and America might just get out of this quagmire intact. The extrapolation of this is that people like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle can’t continue to operate on the ideological basis that America has to be preeminent in the world in order to maintain security for its citizens. Once we swear off attacking the world’s individual countries as prizes in the scope of imperialism our enemies have the option to become our allies. If we cannot find it within ourselves to forego preemptive war as the only option, then only the corporations win because they are the ones that want war to go on perpetually. That’s how they make their money and earn dividends for shareholders. If this war didn’t make money for Halliburton, KRB, SAIC and numerous mercenary groups, there would be no war.  If peak oil wasn't a concern amongst these corporations then war wouldn't be the focus of their industries.  Finding alternative fuel sources isn't a just a problem for the United States.  It is a problem which has enveloped the world and it is a problem that requires the good things that America represents in the ability to come up with new technologies which alleviate the problem.  The elimination of staid fuel sources such as oil and natural gas as points of conflict would eliminate war on a massive scale.  Finding new sources of fuel would allow the world to come together to the betterment of all of the people, and troglidytes like George W. Bush would fade into the past. So for the people of Iraq, I applaud you for standing up en masse and telling the world that you want America out of your country. For the people of America, I implore you to stand up for the innocent Iraqi people and demand that America withdraw as soon as possible in order to give the Iraqi people some breathing room to discuss their differences. And for Moktada al Sadr and other militia leaders, you have the only key to open up Iraq for your people. Put your weapons down and refuse to fight. If you have the conviction to fight, then have the conviction to stand strong against the invading force of America with no weapons and dare us to shoot you dead for no reason. The whole world is watching. You have the better hand in this game of three card monty. Bet the ranch. Use it and truly win your freedoms. A military defeat at the hands of this administration guarantees you 50 years of occupation. A moral certainty that you can provide freedom and peace for your people without weapons will win the hearts and minds of the world. Put down your weapons of war and embrace peace. Then peacefully demonstrate against a country that invaded yours without cause and plead your case before the people and courts of the world. And let it be known that the people of the world include the people of the United States of America because we voted out the dogs of war and have voted in the prosecutors of peace. There is only one man in this entire country that has the power to ignore the American people and he is doing it right now, and he’s using you, the Iraqi people, as his scapegoat. Drop your arms and refuse to fight your neighbors. Drop your arms and refuse to mount a continued insurgency. The whole world already knows that the Iraqi people have been wronged, but as long as the slaughter continues, the United States can claim having a stake in the outcome. So design your own outcome and shortchange the Bush administration’s designs on your country. Tell them you will not be held hostage by the dogs of war because you will not fight a war against your own people. Tell them that to suggest a war against one’s own is against any precepts of freedom that one could conceive, and tell us to get the fuck out of your country. But do it without weapons. Allow yourselves the dignity of discourse in your differences without fear of retribution. This is what is known as true freedom, and something that our military forces haven’t told you about. 10:21:22 AM    comment []

Friday, April 13, 2007

Today’s Topic: Concentration of News for Profit and What the News Ignores As much as Don Imus’ downfall has not only been talked about from the mainstream news but brought about by the same group, I only have to say that my African-American wife suggested that perhaps this should be considered a freedom of speech issue. Well, I’ve said it here a number of times, and as I repeated to her, the Constitution guarantees your right to freedom of speech, but it is the people who have the right to grant you your right to freedom of speech. In the first place, freedom of speech is guaranteed specifically for the purposes of addressing grievances against the government, not for grandizement of one’s own personality. Now as it appears, Don Imus just became verbally stupid and upset a lot of people and they well should have been upset. Don must bear the brunt of the vocal outburst and the people who contracted with Mr. Imus to provide a radio show have the right to pull his show if it offends the listening audience. In terms of how most freewheeling Americans react, the concept of "if you don’t like his show, don’t listen" applies to the freedom of speech sanctuary, but if people do listen and hear things which are offensive, they have the right to bring up the fact that things were said that aren’t within what mainstream Americans want said. And truthfully, it behooves society to have watchdogs who monitor extremists which may present problems to the majority of Americans through the actions of a few. However, this isn’t what we are talking about here. Freedom of speech comes from the people you speak to. Again, the Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech is in terms of addressing a war, for example, that was sold to the people based on false and purposely misleading information. This administration’s efforts to "cage" dissent large distances from an administration based event is an abuse of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution. But there is nothing to say that Don Imus might actually have his right to freedom of speech taken from him. His sole job is to bring dollars into the company broadcasting his show, and if the advertisers aren’t there, then the show is of no value. With the pullout of a large number of advertisers who no longer wish to be associated with his show, NBC (via MSNBC) and CBS both choose to negate Don Imus’ contract and there is absolutely no conflict with the First Amendment right of free speech. However, there are some niggling points that should be addressed, and it actually applies to the more vocal African-American contingent of the American population. I find it incongruous that blacks (and my wife doesn’t object to being black, so I’ll continue to use it until she tells me different) have the generally accepted right to speak in whatever terms they wish and white’s are held up to scrutiny and even ridicule when falling into the generational jargon espoused by a large number of blacks. For instance, when it comes to rap music and its broadcast over the airwaves, most white people simply don’t listen if they don’t find the music pleasurable, or they don’t listen because they object to the language or the degradation of blacks as a whole. And admittedly there has previously been a number of uproars about rap music and the negative connotations, either direct or insinuated, that are derogatory to black women specifically and women as a whole. There have been many congressional hearings, which have decried the same source for talking about and possibly even inciting black people to kill policemen. And this is a reasonable concern. But white people aren’t allowed to have this concern, nor to express it in the same context which black people can. This isn’t a case of white vs. black discrimination, it is a case of reverse discrimination. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been called a honky and a cracker dating back to my high school years in the 60s. Regardless of that I chose a gentleman who happened to be both a great friend and a black person to be my first born son’s godfather. I was more often than not quartered with black servicemen, largely because it appears that more blacks were in the service during the Viet Nam war than whites, but regardless the constant derogatory remarks about being white in the middle of a black society didn’t cause me any concern. However, even though blacks on the street seem to have a self-derogatory verbal environment that seemingly also creates a vicious circle of self degradation and a wider outreach of disdain for all those of white descent, I would rather not hear comments about me being a cracker or a honky or whitey or whatever that somehow distinguishes me as something other than a human being. I’m certain that all Americans feel this way, whether inconsequentially black or white. No one chooses their parents and are the people they are. However, for this consideration upon the part of the black population I think that we somehow have to correct the problems by not allowing someone promote negatives about any American citizens, regardless of race, on either TV or Radio. These are radio frequencies held in trust by the federal government for the people of America, and that means all of the people. What I want to know is how black oriented TV shows can easily deride the white American without fear of being held to the same level of community obligations? For if all of America is a community it includes all of those who comprise the community. The real question also points to some other areas America, as a government, has with not understanding the psyche of a group of people. Let’s face it, white America and it’s government enslaved or allowed enslavement of a race of people. How do we address this at some level of equilibrium? How is it possible to allow Revs. Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson the ability to continually pull up the sins of our fathers and when will it stop? Don’t get me wrong. I really like Al Sharpton. He’s a pip and almost every time I’ve listened to him, even in the case of discussing Don Imus’ gaffe, I agree with him. He really does have the pulse of America even if most Americans don’t see it. However, when he speaks about accountability, and I agree wholeheartedly, I want to know is when that door is going to begin to swing both ways. I remember when my now 28 year old son was bopping around the house to rap from NWA and a number of other artists who continually provided a barrage of anti-woman and anti-white sentiment, and it finally took me, in front of my wife, to inform him that negative things being presented in these songs were about him simply because he was born white. As nice as it is to have children who grow up oblivious to racial differences, it crushed me to have to tell my son that these artists represented a portion of today’s blacks and they don’t like whites. I would rather he continued to be oblivious of what some people perceive as racial differences. I actually have had more black people being disposed to tell me what they think about me having a black wife than I have whites wondering what the hell I’m doing being married to a black woman. I have no idea of whether the reverse is true for my wife, as she has never broached the subject. Well, for all that read this, I’m married to a wonderful woman and we will be celebrating our 19th Anniversary this year and I’ve never been happier. I assume that my wife is either happy or she is a saint to put up with me. Either way, I get the better of the situation. So I ask. When is it that the door will swing both ways? How is it that whites have to hold their tongues when blacks are seemingly more than willing to wag theirs? Now before anyone gets angry, yes, we are talking about a very few individuals who bring these situations to a head, but one has to wonder. Like I said, I’ve had no problems with being called the names I’ve been called, but more often than not it has been within the realm of a greeting handshake and a genuine feeling of being welcomed. Largely I have used "brother" as a designation, which during my service days, really meant a black to black relationship but held a slightly different connotation for those who may die today or tomorrow. But I felt it was more the truth of the situation, not some type of opt-in to a brotherhood to which I wasn’t invited. As this white to black interplay became more pronounced, obviously it became more important to have a black to black personal designation to dissuade whites from becoming part of the group, hence the growth of the "N" word as some level of greeting for blacks. Strictly a reaction based on bias and bigotry, if you ask me. Certainly it is one of disengagement. Those who chose to use the "N" word did so in order to disassociate themselves from whites, period. The street is different and continually has been a breeding ground for expressing differences between blacks and whites, and no matter how many black friends a white person may have, or how often they are able to exchange some racially yet good-natured barbs without insult, it doesn’t work within the rest of America.  Perhaps a large continguent of America's 2 million incarcerated citizens being black may have something to do with the dichotomy.  So perhaps they aren't part of the "rest of America". Notice I ended that statement with "America". This is because most of the world doesn’t have the same biased and even bigoted view, however slanted it might be or how wrong it might be. Being an American somehow relates to most Americans as being white. This has to stop but the largely black communities could help. If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a country to raise awareness and eliminate prejudice. And that effort requires the participation of all Americans. But it is also true that the blacks of America need to simply become Americans and perhaps drop the ever-present African-American nomenclature if the differing cultures are truly to be integrated into a cohesive whole. As long as blacks on the streets hold it a right to degrade whites, or as long as whites can degrade blacks (usually groups of whites vs. one black, as we are a bunch of pussies afraid of a higher level of melanine), then we still aren’t a true people. There is no use in apologizing for slavery as President Clinton did if large segments of the citizens of America don’t agree or accept the apology. I didn’t implement slavery, have never condoned the idea, and certainly haven’t had anything to do with slavery at all. I’d appreciate it if I weren’t somehow lumped in with the white Americans of 400 years ago who did. So if accountability were the key, as Al Sharpton has intimated, then I’d like accountability to go both ways. Tell me why blacks are more than willing to denigrate their bothers with the "N" word, thus helping to hold them down and presumably to stifle their dreams when there is already enough of this happening in a largely white country. Seems to me that those who have been downtrodden would benefit from organizing and raising themselves up, rather than trying to keep their brothers down.  I believe that was what the Black Panthers were really all about.  By standing up for proper treatment of their brothers by witnessing arrests, they stood fast on the idea of equal treatment. In other words, I think it is time for the black community to look to standing up to the level of being more than a street society and joining the rest of society. Once we get that started perhaps we can come together and start working on integrating the Hispanics so they feel more like Americans and less like third world citizens. Thomas Jefferson wrote "that all men are created equal", and although that was good enough to get the ball rolling, lets face it. The proper way to say it is "that all mankind is created equal" and get this other bullshit over with now. Then perhaps we could adjust some of our concern to Darfur and the genocide going on there even as I spend the time to write this blog.  If all mankind is created equal, and I belive it is, then the same requires that all stand up for people everywhere. You can't do that by standing on the street corner debasing women, making derogatory statements about people of other communities and deciding that some people in the world aren't worth saving.  This is not West Side Story.  This is life and no one gets out alive.  Try to do something positive while you are here.  The fact is you'll feel better about yourself and your place in society. 1:05:39 PM    comment []

Friday, April 06, 2007

Today’s Topic: Resizing Government or Politicization? As every firefighter will tell you, if you ignore smoke even in the most innocuous circumstances, then you will have to fight a fire in the near future. So "where there is smoke, there is fire" isn’t some made up saying, it is a time proven observation about life circumstances, and to ignore smoke when seen is to invite a fire that may well burn beyond one’s ability to control it. A Bush supporter, Grover Norquist has stated that he wanted government so small that you could flush it down the toilet, excuse the paraphrasing. For such a political supporter to somehow become a major player in the way this administration treats all forms of government isn’t necessarily visible, but how the implications become apparent are indications of the depths to which the administration has sunk to guarantee Republican success. And we are talking about a one party success that even overshadows the people because these political pundits, administration high ups and Republican functionaries don’t care a thing about what the Republican party is actually about. The new Republican party, as I have oft said, has moved to the right so far that the center has now become the left. This allows the true left of American political discourse to be derided as so far left that they are out of the mainstream of America. Nothing could be further from the truth. For if so, then perhaps the Republican agenda of unfettered governmental control through politicization of the Executive branch of government wouldn’t be the smoke we see today. To date this administration has delved into avenues of deception as to inculcate themselves from investigation due to the very obviousness of their actions. All the while this administration was not only placing highly partisan political appointees into each and every administrative position as to present the non-political hires of the government with a choice of becoming political or losing their jobs. If there is smoke, there is fire. During Bush’s first term he appointed several members to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ostensibly for the purpose of fulfilling positions about to become empty, but the fact is that those appointed were specifically appointed to change PBS into a political arm of the government. If this sounds ridiculous, then blame it on Bush. Not only was the CBP corrupted by partisan politics, but it is now only a matter of time before all of the information comes out about just how deep this insidious plan has burrowed. Today’s news about the GSA upper management being subjected to partisan politics suggests to the career people that their jobs are in jeopardy if they don’t play ball. The fact that the Hatch Act was implemented to stop just such levels of political partisanship into the professional levels of government administration seemingly means nothing to THIS Administration. If there is smoke, there is fire. Alberto Gonzales, current Attorney General of the United States and the person that approved John Yoo’s memo on how quaint the Geneva Conventions are is now subject to the scrutiny that all of Bush’s appointees need to have re-hashed. If not for the removal, which requires impeachment, then by exposure and hopefully resignation. The idea of playing the part of Attorney General and still being a Presidential buddy is well beyond the scope of good government and simply smacks of politicization of governmental organizations. The Supreme Court spoke on the fact that the EPA does indeed have a mandate to delve into any aspect of the environment and coming up with rulings that provide protections for the people of America is another evidence of political malfeasance in this administration. Since President Bush has continually neglected real science in order to promote not only doing nothing to push the EPA into protecting the American people, this shows a marked effort towards protecting America’s Corporate entities from being responsible for the environment they contaminate. By this President mercury in our drinking water isn’t a problem, although any heavy metal in our drinking water could have personal ramifications. If the person doesn’t matter than the people don’t matter. So what if only some thousand die from exposure to heavy metals in the drinking water? What reason for concern when hundreds of thousands die every day? Who is going to notice? There are more examples readily available in the news if one want’s to look at it. Today my local channel news reported that Congress was responsible for delaying Alberto Gonzales’ testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee until the 17th of April, when the same Committee reported that Alberto Gonzales refused to accept any date under any conditions prior to the 17th of April. Once public opinion and the hairs on the back of the necks of Senators got up Gonzales approached the Senate with alternative dates, of which all were already filled with voluntary or incurred testimony. Somehow the misrepresentation of the circumstances are even filtering their way down from the White House to disparage the Senate as a house and Congress as a whole. Lies have a way of being found out. Senator Patrick Leahy, D. Vermont, was given ample time on Meet the Press two weeks ago to speak to the Gonzales testimony and the time lines, and unless one wants to call the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee a liar, Gonzales chose the date and refused to accept any earlier date. Well, that is until his legal counsel chose to invoke the 5th Amendment for possible future crimes to which she would not testify. Now let’s just get this right. The 5th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States says, and I quote: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The problem is with the "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…" to which one cannot apply the possibility of committing crime in honestly testifying to Congress as a criminal offense. No where else within the 5th Amendment does one surmise that honest testimony requires a level of protections that one need not testify. Certainly one cannot suppose that Congress would purposefully subject a witness to bipartisan questioning in the attempt to garner false testimony with the purposes of charging anyone with perjury. The legal arguments are specious at the least, and possibly criminal in intent, which is to deprive Congress of truthful testimony. The criminal intent not only would extend to the witness, but to the legal counsel if they supported such a dismal legal argument towards misdirection or dismissal of important testimony. Where there is smoke, there is fire. During Bill Clinton’s administration he was consistently embattled by legal actions brought about by the Republicans, some eerily resembling claims made today about the Bush administration and it’s policies. The difference is that the Clinton administration was only kept busy so that they couldn’t administer the Republic well, whereas the Bush administration has made every effort that their inability to properly administer the Republic would be ignored. They chose to achieve this with tactics from making all those who might question their efforts into anti-Americans to insidiously using the news media to forge a path towards true one party rule. Anything in between is an effort on the part of one party rule. Politicization of governmental workers is just one of the avenues this administration has used to negate the people’s right to know what is happening in their representative Republic. Without the ability of Congress to investigate and verify the quality of government by the Administration, the American people are nothing but shills in a game of three card Monty, often voting without their votes counting, and actually having nothing to do for which this country stands. However, I have to admit. The stated use of the possibility of testifying falsely under oath might be a cause for invoking the 5th Amendment is possibly the most artistic use of bullshit I have ever seen, considering that the Amendment refers to crimes already created. One only has the ability to suppose that said testimony is GOING to be false. And it appears that the Bush Administration is willing to accept the possibility that they can change the Constitution by declaring that future criminal acts are covered. Since the Republican Congress already gave immunity from prosecution to any and all who broke the law in pursuit of terrorists, then obviously this administration now wants to set a legal precedent that one cannot testify against themselves for something they might do. Laws don’t mean shit if ALL the people don’t have to abide by the laws. 2:00:35 PM    comment []

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Stupidity of John McCain I’m sorry, but my first thought about John McCain’s little "jaunt" through a market in Baghdad was that retaliation was going to take place, and here, one single day after that jaunt 21 Shia market workers were bound, terrorized and murdered. Perhaps it isn’t the best thing to try to show Americans how well things are going in Iraq because things are definitely not going well in Iraq. They are not going well for us Americans and they are not going well for the Iraqi people. This is the best example of why we have to get our troops out of Iraq. We’re not talking about running away, but running towards the ability of the Iraq people to make the determination to choose freedom. Geez, if we had half a heart we’d bust butt out of that country and allow them to solve their own problems. But no, Nancy Pelosi gets lambasted by the President and the right wing for going to talk to Syria whilst John McCain gets kudos for walking through a Baghdad market with 100 troops providing security with the result being 21 Iraqi people being killed. Please, John, don’t stop by my house on your way back to the Senate. Is it just me or is John McCain about to bust a gusset? I don’t believe he any longer has a hold on reality. Talk about Freudian slips, the statement about why the Republicans lost the "war, er, majority" pretty much tells the tale. John is a personal hero of mine, much like David Hackworth, but the truth be known, John should probably stick with being the Senator from Arizona rather than trying to be the President of the United States. We already have a confused White House. We don’t need to continue it for another 4 years. Assuming, of course, that John could possibly win the election, which he no longer is able to do. I’m sorry John. Drop out now and save what is left of your humanity. 12:24:06 AM    comment []

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Ramifications of Freedom Given At Gunpoint I am constantly flabbergasted at the myriad of excuses for the failure of trying to bestow freedom upon the Iraqi people at the end of a gun. There is no historical proof that such an action could be accomplished, nay, rather the opposite is true. Freedom is WON, not bestowed. There are no accounts of freedom being bestowed upon a country by aggression. Ok, so don’t start arguing about Japan and Germany after WWII. The Allies were not the aggressor and in fact were the benefactors of freedom to those countries, righting wrongs done by governments against their own people. There is nothing the same in this aggressive occupation of Iraq by American forces without prior cause. Remember, even the United Nations’ Secretary Kofi Annon declared America’s invasion of Iraq as an illegal war. Even Pope John Paul denounced the invasion. The unprovoked aggression of the United States discounts all other reasonable arguments or avenues towards a people gaining their freedom, for the true idea of freedom is that freedom is gained, not given. Freedom has to be earned by the people for no one can KNOW the sacrifices that freedom entails without having actually made the decision as a people to make those sacrifices. This is why Iraqi freedom will never be realized as long as American troops are on the ground in Iraq nor in Afghanistan. For you see, others than the people direct the efforts towards freedom. Freedom is based only on the idea of all the people being free, and if one person is not free then all the people cannot be free. When Afghanistan had its elections the people didn’t vote for a new government. They had that government instituted upon them by the United States and the warlords working in collusion. To the people, just as in Viet Nam, the only difference was that the government was something being foisted upon them without the people’s sacrifice to gain that government, and without the willful march of the people towards freedom regardless of the sacrifices. As it stands in Afghanistan, it is still possible that the Taliban will be seen as the people’s choice against the aggressive United States and the west, for a known is better than an unknown. President Karzai is president in name only. The warlords surrounding Kabul have more power AND support than this American puppet. Don’t get me wrong. President Karzai is not a bad man, although his association with the CIA during the Soviet’s occupation places him in both an admired position but just as real the Afghani recognize that his American affiliations means his loyalties are in question. Loyalties in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, stand above any recognition of regional or national government. Loyalties in most third world countries start at home, with local and regional strongmen being given respect and honor for their strength. Loyalties build strength amongst the people, whereas federal governments are seen as outsiders who do not deserve the same respect or loyalty. When applied to Iraq then one can easily see why the new Iraqi Army and Police fail to hold together when pressed into service against other Iraqis. The Iraqi Army is a geologically dispersed yet a centrally accumulated conglomeration of troops, all loyal to their own family, clan and region. But these loyalties don’t hold if the soldier is from Basra and deployed in Baghdad. Nor does it hold if these same troops were deployed within their own region and their orders conflicted with their loyalties.  Dying for family or clan is a no brainer.  Dying for any other purpose hopefully comes with old age. This is why such a strongman as Saddam Hussein was able to use his Sunni loyalties in providing all the necessary troops to ensure the continued existence of a federal Iraq. Obviously this is not the formula for freedom. Nor is having invasive occupiers with boots on the ground a good method to provide freedom. To the Iraqi people, one dictator is just as bad as the other. And again, we have a Prime Minister placed in a position of authority and recognized as the American puppet he really is. Before anyone wishes to try to change history, remember, George Bush didn’t want the elected Prime Minister, so changes had to be made and Jalalabad was replaced with Al Malaki. If an outside force such as the United States can ignore the people, forcing them to live with a hand selected Prime Minister rather than living with the one the Iraqi people’s elected representatives voted for, then the Iraqi people also realize that their votes don’t really count for much. If your votes don’t count and your elected government can be manipulated, then the possibility of getting the invading force out of your country is nil, and this breeds resentment and insurgency. AND it opens up the doors for the typical Arab philosophy, which is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has gained a foothold even though the majority of Iraqi people would rather not have even more problems foisted upon them. So let’s just look at the problem from a realistic viewpoint rather than Bush’s skewed one. Let’s just get this right. The insurgency is just that. Iraqi people fighting for their own country against a foreign invader and occupier. These are the true freedom fighters in Iraq. I’m sorry they are killing Americans, but they are no more wrong than America’s freedom fighters during the American Revolutionary War. And in both cases the end of such insurgencies would have only taken both King Georges to realize that no war was necessary. The insurgency’s life comes from and is sustained by the outside forces and will go away when those outside forces are removed. This means both the United States Armed Forces and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In fact, Al Qaeda’s intercepted transmissions have expressed the worry about the terrorists giving up and going home if America withdrew. Hence, it would seem to me that Bush is playing into their hands by apparently setting up America to be firmly planted within Iraq for the next 50 years. So if we go away, the jihadists will go away, at least since their idea isn’t to fight other Arabs. And I have no doubts that this is true given the chance. In fact, I’m just as positive that the Iraqi people would rally together to kick Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia out of Iraq once and for all. Even Arabs in an Arab country are invaders if they are not Iraqis in Iraq. At this point the only problem left to be solved for the Iraqi people to actually be free stems from the necessity of the religious differences being worked out or being plowed under by the victor. There is nothing America can do one way or the other in this conflict. It is between the religious factions of Iraq and must be solved by the Iraqi people without American troops’ hot breath breathing down their necks. The truth of the situation is that we created the problem and if we went away, even though much must happen to make Iraq a truly free Iraq, we have to accept that an aggressive invader cannot bring freedom at the point of a gun. And it is true that Iraq may well spring into a full-fledged civil war, but it is also just as true that without the commitment of the people of Iraq to fight for and gain their freedom, they will never accomplish their freedom. This is a major problem in the conflict because the majority of the people cannot fight for their own freedom. On one side they have the Americans and are denied the ability to defend themselves with weapons the bad guys have, and on the other they have the insurgents and the militias whom the Americans cannot even find much less defeat. With one side gone there is more room for the average Iraqi to work towards their own determination of what freedom means to them. Without the ability to make that determination they are just caught between warring factions and those factions will continue to fight for years or even decades to come. This is the can of worms we have opened upon our Iraq friends (I know, not a nice way to treat friends, now is it?). Since the can is opened there will be some of the worms that escape. That is just life. If you don’t want your worms to escape, don’t open the can. Or better known as Colin Powell saying, "If you break it, you own it". Well, Bush has broken it and we stood by and watched. Some even continue to firmly believe. Rather than try to own it and put it back together, it is much more likely that the people of Iraq will have a better chance of securing their own freedom than we will have in handing that freedom to them on a platter supported on the barrels of guns. The facts on the ground support withdrawal of our troops. Only then can America start healing its wounds inflicted by a mismanaged Bush administration, and perhaps allow the US to start the process of healing it’s relationships with the world. 9:34:10 AM    comment []

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Today’s Topic: Why Does This Administration Believe Gitmo To Be Foreign Soil? I quote from the "official" history of Guantanamo Bay as presented on the official U.S Naval Station, Buantanamo Bay, Cuba. This quote is from "The History of Guantanamo Bay 1494-1964" by M. E. Murphy, Rear Admiral, U. S. Navy (http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/htmpgs/gtmohistory.htm) and is as follows: "In all provisions regarding the Guantanamo area, the original agreement (February 1903) and the supplementary agreement were later confirmed by the Treaty of 1934 between the United States and Cuba, signed at Washington on 29 May 1934… "…This treaty has the effect of giving the United States a perpetual lease on this reservation, capable of being voided only by our abandoning the area or by mutual agreement between the two countries. The so-called "Platt Amendment," which gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba, died with this treaty. Bahia Honda was not mentioned, having long since been abandoned. "Thus it is clear that at Guantanamo Bay we have a Naval reservation which, for all practical purposes, is American territory. Under the foregoing agreements, the United States has for approximately fifty years exercised the essential elements of sovereignty over this territory, without actually owning it. Unless we abandon the area or agree to a modification of the terms of our occupancy, we can continue in the present status as long as we like." So my question is why does this administration believe Guantanamo Bay to be foreign soil and thus not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Court system of the United States of America? Now if you look at the official list of American territories you won’t find Guantanamo Bay, but you will find Guam. With the exception of Guantanamo being physically located on the Cuban island you will find no difference in either how or when both of these territories were ceded to the United States of America under treaty after the Spanish-American war in 1898. The only difference is that America occupied all of Cuba until 1 March 1901 when a Guantanamo Bay lease was negotiated. For all practical purposes, from 1901 to 1934 Guantanamo was a leased property with Cuban ability to re-assert sovereignty, but after the 29 March 1934 treaty between Cuba and the United States, Guantanamo, as the quote above says, "for all practial purposes, is American territory." Now someone far smarter than I is going to have to find either a direct correlation between Guantanamo Bay and the definition of an American territory, but since both territories were ceded to the United States as a condition of the treaty that ended the Spanish-American war, one only has to suppose that the definition is miniscule in difference. Again from the above quoted federally approved website we have "Under the foregoing agreements, the United States has for approximately fifty years exercised the essential elements of sovereignty over this territory, without actually owning it. Unless we abandon the area or agree to a modification of the terms of our occupancy, we can continue in the present status as long as we like." This statement is from the official history circa 1964 and thus establishes over 100 years of Guantanamo being an American territory by a cessation of war treaty. However, even only using the 1934 treaty date with then Cuban authorities, we have a historical precedence set for Guantanamo being an American territory that encompasses the past 73 years. American territories are American soil. Embassies are American soil. Leased military bases throughout the world are considered American soil. All laws of the United States of America apply to all territories, Embassies and military bases and give all those residing or held on the same access to legal process and jurisprudence. The one situation where the above is not true is when a civilian has broken a law within the confines of the host country and, by virtue of choice, any such civilian personnel may be remanded to the host country’s legal system. Any military or government employeed civilian personnel will be handled by the United States, whether that may be under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice for military or civilian jurisprudence in accordance with Federal law.. So we can see that those "enemy combatants" designated by the President should have full access to the legal system of the United States. There is no such thing as Gitmo being on foreign soil. It is American soil, ceded to the United States by Spain after the Spanish-American war, and there are no ambiguities about the legal status of people on American territories. Now some may question the logic of my declarations, but no one can say that the importation of "enemy combatants" from countries where America is the occupier escape the legal system. For if America is an occupier of a foreign state, then those captured on that soil are still on American soil. Logic dictates that one is not possible without the other, so by Americans standing in both Afghanistan and Iraq, those countries become, at the least, protectorates and thus are subject to American laws. If you have American soldiers pointing weapons at your head, you are subject to American intentions and thus under to umbrella of American law. But you don’t have to say "American law" because all law has historically been decided by the victor, or in this case, the occupier. In Iraq all are under the military law of the occupation, thus under American law. The American occupiers, if laws are broken, are under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. No one gets a pass. Well, except for the mercenaries. The same applies to the duration of America's occupation of Afghanistan prior to the multi-national and NATO imported troops. Why, then, does this administration feel that they can negate the rule of law?  I can only surmise that the reason lies with the inability to provide proof that "enemy combatants" are what the government claims. Without truely free and open trials of these people there is no hope for America to maintain the last little bit of respect it holds in the world. Americans need to recognize that Guantanamo Bay is not a foreign soil but an American soil.  There are no compelling reasons to hold people without legal recourse. I should mention that any of the cases which have gone to the Supreme Court of the United States have not addressed the concept that Guantanamo Bay is U. S. territory and thus automatically has the protections of the court extended to detainees held.  I've read the briefs and they all miss this point, so the Supreme Court doesn't rule on that basis.  You have to ask the Supreme Court the right questions to get the right answers. 2:00:33 PM    comment []

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Commenter's name: Rev. Don Spitz Email address: Glory2Jesus@ArmyofGod.com Commenting on: http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/2006/08/04.html#a122 I love it. "Against abortion? Don't have one". That's like, "Don't believe in shooting babykilling abortionists, then don't shoot one." SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life. SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life. # Dear Rev. Spitz, Not any relations to Mark (the Olympic swimming champion) are you? Just kidding. You don't really want to go into a battle without ammunition, do you? The hatred in your email is readily discerned. The line between purposely murdering someone whether they have a different political or religious bent is against the law, whilst abortion is not, and my blog was about what is legal and whether you still have options over abortion. Is your "army" of God here to take retribution upon those you consider sinners, or to promote a positive that teaches what abortion is about and the ramifications? I'm not going to say any prayer based on what you perceive, and if I do say a prayer it will only be FOR others, never for myself. I'd suggest however, that if you want to use Jesus in your prayers then you also disregard using the Old Testament for your salvation's sake and the "POP" value of supposedly straight from God's mouth hellfire scripture that belonged to the Hebrews. The Old Testament didn't offer you or me salvation, only fear. Jesus, however, did offer salvation. The Old Testament said it was just fine to own slaves and that one should stone an adulterer, which, of course, would mean that there wouldn't be a Jimmy Swaggart or a number of "fine" evangelical Christian preachers, now doesn't it. My point is that if you wish to try to stop abortion then educate people, but not just with the shock value of your images on your web home page. How about the psychological devastation often caused by the doubt of one's actions after an abortion? How about stepping up to the plate and placing as many babies that would be aborted into homes or creating community homes where all of those in the congregation have the opportunity to help in the lives and development of a child? There would be more church members running around than children if something like this were taken seriously. But it seems that the easy path is to preach against one thing rather than offering attractive positives such as Jesus would like to have seen, particularly with the poor. Jesus didn't use but one negative in his preachings, and that was in his expression of contempt for the loss of the sanctity of the temple, the condemnation of the money changers and lamenting the loss of true leadership in his father's house. You know, it isn't lost on a lot of us that Jesus said he was a fisher of men, for I'm pretty certain that it takes more finesse to capture fish than herd sheep. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate whether one should be monitoring other people's morality, or checking one's own. When it comes down to that last rattling breath, it is only you and what's beyond and if that is something one fears then perhaps the totality of it all isn't what you've done nor how you've done it, but what is truly in your heart. This is one reason why I don't hold to the tenet that one can have a deathbed confession and have all of their sins absolved in the Catholic perception of Christianity. Leading and preaching, in my humble view, are not the same thing. Jesus led and explained what he meant with parable. Most preachers are just preaching and from what I've heard the hyperbole of preaching just doesn't come up to the level Jesus set by his own example. Why not set up anti-abortion clinics that offer prenatal care, psychological counseling and child placement? Why not advertise such an entity, offering both the guarantees of quality health and mental care for the full term child along with the anonymity and mental health of the birth parent? Tell me why, just a scant 50 years ago a backroom abortion was against the law (or any abortion) and somehow the tainting and ostracism of pregnant unmarried young women in trouble was perfectly acceptable to church going people? I can find the reason for the first whether it is Constitutionally flawed or not, but I can't seem to find anything in the New Testament that suggests anyone should be treated in such a way for getting pregnant yet having the child. Else, if community isn't part of the spiritual path, then why would families feel like they had to send young ladies off to some "aunt", and why wasn't there more accountability for the biological father of the child (other than statutory rape or straight rape, and where does this play into the family that has a sexually abusive father)? Or does one prescribe shotgun weddings that create a living hell here on earth not only for the adults but for the children due to an indiscretion rather than offering some level of hope? Or perhaps stoning is the correct answer? And wouldn't stoning be a form of abortion, whether pregnancy were known or not? Not to mention plain old murder. It appears to me that during my upbringing including a pastor who performed the marriage ceremonies for both my sister's weddings as well as mine (and he let me play the church organ after school as much as I wanted), that even God fearing communities like to have something they can point to that somehow makes them better than "those" people. This does NOT seem like a very Christian solution at all. Jesus didn't exclude anyone on his path. Those excluded do so themselves, and it seems to me that many profess to be on the path yet make the daily mistake of missing virtually all that Jesus taught. I don't mean to argue and I'm certainly not here to preach, but I will say that one cannot demand only ONE solution to a compound problem. When it is illegal to get an abortion, well, if it happens it is the law of the land and there are legal ramifications if caught. But when a young person makes a mistake and yet is ostracized for having made the mistake yet choosing to have the child, then the obvious thing is that there are no solutions for that person because no other solutions were provided. Unless one can offer a comprehensive and guaranteed method to combat all of the problems, one is just adding to the complexity of the problems. So you can show your pictures and lambaste me all you want. You can even try to sneak a prayer in there for me to say, but unless you know how to answer the more complex questions, or at least profess to a willingness towards coming up with complex answers for the complex questions, well, you've failed in your email to me. In the meantime, I hope that you have a better day than the 5,000 children that died in the time it took me to write this. And you know what? Not one of them died due to an abortion. 3:27:49 PM    comment []

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Today’s Topic: Small Farms and Corporate Abuse OK, so I’m watching CSPAN II which has just had Senators Chuck Grassley and Byron Dorgan talking about their amendment to the Farm Subsidy Bill as presented under Bush’s current Budget Bill, but I have a few things to say. I emotionally grew up working on a farm, although I was farmed out by my parents during the summer in order to have this honor. My uncle had two boys and needed more hands, so I spent a number of summers working on the farm. Personally I think I went to a better school during the summers working on the farm than the years I went to a US supported public school. What I came up with is a deeply seated respect for people that work the land in small family situations in order to make some kind of living. I dug potatoes day after day, and I rode the farm moving cattle from one grazing field to another. I hunted rabbit and deer in order to protect our own family plot of vegetables. I even hunted ground hogs, and we ate whatever we killed and hoped that what remained of the plantings would last the winter. The operational expense of a working farm is tremendous. The cost to have equipment necessary to harvest corn or wheat seems to be a methodical effort to impose debt on those families who farm in order to push them off their land so that Big Agriculture can make even larger farms though bank loan defaults. Of all the companies that manufacture farm equipment, I find that none have a leasing program that allows those with need have the ability to use the equipment without having the onus placed upon them for owning and maintaining the equipment. It was suggested by Senator Dorgan that a farming family that ended up with a gross revenue of $200,000 US were somehow doing fine. Bullshit. It cost at least $200,000 to buy a harvester, which is pretty application specific. In the world we live in, it is impossible to suggest that the only solutions available to farming communities and individuals is to continue to put up your farm as collateral for farm loans. A method of taking away the ability of small farmers to make a reasonable living is simply the fact that most seed stock is hybrid and not able to replicate, thus unable to supply the farmers with a costless source of seeds. This means that the farmer is obligated to purchase new seed year and year after in order to have a possible crop. And the fact is that these same family farmers have to mortgage their homes and farms in order to be able to purchase these same seeds. What happens if you have a combine that helps you plant hundreds of acres of seeds and it is broken down during planting season? Where does one go to get the money to fix the problem if their entire existence is already mortgaged to the bank for the seed necessary for the crop? The system is biased towards the corporate agribusiness, and there’s not one family farmer who thinks different. The problem with the way the United States of America treats farming is as if all participants of the available program will benefit, whilst the majority of these programs favor the agribusiness, not the family farmer. The truth is that most farming communities based on a family operation is that they are having these problems happens to be the fact that the large Agribusiness entities can sell the corn to the family whilst setting the prices for corn from their own businesses, and still those families will have to buy new seed next year. If seed were used that would spawn new fields without monetary input, and corporations would manufacture equipment which could be leased rather than purchased, then the family farmer might actually be able to make ends meet. I suggest that all farmers look to Europe to get seeds that can be planted and yield crops that would then be able to be planted to grow the next year’s crop. This would end some of the problems. And believe me, this idea of seed crops that won’t allow the farmer to have multiple years of crop growth isn’t a small part of the problem. It is the problem. By having Agribusiness having the money to develop all the new seeds resistant to a number of biological problems, a certain amount of necessity is placed on purchasing these seeds. The problem is that the people producing the seeds are the ones in competition with the small family farm. And the small family farm sits on land those same Agribusiness wish to aquire. In other words, since the 1950s, this country has been working towards killing off family owned farms by providing farm benefits that support the large Agribusiness, not the family farm. It is easy to see. Just look at the last 50 years of small family owned farms vs what big business has done to agriculture. 2:36:57 PM    comment []

Monday, March 19, 2007

Today’s Topic: Behind the US Attorney Firings on the Fourth Anniversary of the War in Iraq OK, so the truth of the matter is that this or any President has the right to hire and/or fire anyone within the executive branch without the necessity of justification for the firing unless the position were a union represented one. However, its unlikely that any peon within the executive branch would have a run-in with the President that would require that person being fired. So now it comes down to the fact on the board, and that is political appointment. Now in a previous blog I talked about political appointments and political officers, which are two different things. The insidious move towards politicization of executive branch offices offers one view of the administration and the efforts to consolidate more and greater power under the banner of the President. But politicization of positions such as the US Attorney’s Office entails a much more sinister outcome, first in terms of testing a new law passed recently by Congress in an "Omnibus" type of massive spending bill, and second, in terms of negating the autonomy of the judicial process. I wrote about using politics to make policy maybe a year ago (I CAN look it up if anyone wants), and I find that I have a constant nagging feeling pertaining to such a reckless manner of establishing our policies when dealing with the world. Remember, the Congress is elected to represent the American people. The House is the people’s direct form of representation, supporting the constituents within their own districts. The Senate is our deliberative arm and those elected to see to it that our executive branch has the tools necessary to faithfully execute the law, whilst providing oversight on that same executive to make certain abuses during the execution of the law are not tolerated. Ah, but there are legal abuses and political abuses. One political abuse can be seen by the repeated Republican mantra of a liberal media whilst denying that there is anything like a right winged Republican conspiracy. However, it is a piddling abuse. The real abuse is in the efforts of this administration to consolidate as much power as possible in the person of the President with the additional goal of capturing and maintaining a Republican majority. Truly an ideology of a one party system, which is diametrically opposed to the design of the Founding Fathers. This is not so bad as written if, in fact, voters are allowed their true votes to be counted and legally tallied when the outcome is just such a system. But how about when using US Attorneys to investigate voter fraud and the political end of the Republican Party constantly uses intimidation and misleading statements to cut down opposition votes? That is voter fraud. When phone lines are systematically jammed on political opponents it is voter fraud. When seemingly innocuous posters depicting Republicans as Democrats using the right picture but the wrong name, that is voter fraud. The point is that an abuse need not be technically illegal but it can still be an abuse. The abuse the past Republican majority heaped upon the American people was the absolute concern for maintaining majority power forever regardless of the outcome. They didn’t and don’t care how they do it, but do it they must, and if the average Joe American is now out of a job or even holding a lower wage job without health benefits, well, that’s just fine for the Republican majority. They only look at the American people as a possible inexpensive workforce for the emerging and old boy network of robber barons. Think not? Well, tell that to the millions of people who worked a lifetime under union labor contracts and have had Republican appointed judges negate these people’s ability to actually receive their retirement benefits forcing them to take on menial jobs during the years they were supposed to be able to enjoy as their "golden" years. Now again, this is not an abuse that could be construed as illegal, but one wonders just how much productivity any country would have if the people only had the prospect of working their entire lives at menial jobs without advancement or benefits. In other words, by kowtowing to the extremely wealthy in this country (and even abroad) the Republicans actually represent those who would gladly steal the American Dream away from the people who actually work to achieve that dream. This is an abuse of power, and such an abuse should be illegal. I honestly think Congress should only be paid an hourly wage and not be allowed to work for more than 6 months out of the year. Then they would know something about having to hold down two jobs just to survive. And if they were serving the people for the people, then we’d have candidates running knowing that they couldn’t make millions in these positions of power. The funny thing about this American Dream thing is that the administration talks about all the new small businesses as the fulfillment of that dream. Little does the average American know that fully 80% of all new small businesses fail within the first two years of operation. But no, by pushing for new small business in Bush’s "ownership society" we have created an even larger number of people in debt and without health coverage, thus adding even more cheap labor to the workforce. And these people are so down by the failure that they don’t even perceive the injustice of encouragement towards owning one’s own business, largely without any business acumen to guarantee the success of said business. Let’s put it this way. If you can’t balance your checkbook then you shouldn’t think about owning a business. And yet even this killing off of the American Dream isn’t illegal. However, it is nefarious and purposeful. Labor unions were virtually all but killed off by Ronald Reagan when he busted the Air Traffic Controller’s Union for refusing to work under stress loads and with outdated equipment that actually endangered the flying American public. Since then certain judicial rulings have incorporated the same idea of "necessary services" as acceptable reasoning for busting unions.  Corporations and non-union American workers applauded as experienced Air Traffic controller’s were replaced by people without the appropriate training who were willing to take less money and sign off on not joining a union. How is this a positive? Today unions represent a mere 7.5% of the workforce whereas unions represented as much as 34% of the workforce during the 1950s. This downfall of unions can’t be totally blamed on a Republican effort to create a cheap workforce as organized crime caused a substantial amount of questions about the veracity of those same unions. But whatever was left over (still 25% of the workforce) was most certainly a target of the Republican party as proxies of their corporate sponsors. Once Ronald Reagan broke the ATC union without any serious opposition or legal challenges a precedent was set. George W. Bush simply pounded in the final nail by negating the ability of the government’s own workforce to be represented by unions in the Department of Homeland Security. The ultimate Republican Party goal is to eliminate labor unions in toto. Again, an abuse, but not necessarily illegal. And even less so once precedence has been set by actions of a President with no legal challenge. The changes become set in policy and then a part of the history of American protections of law without having actually been passed as a law by Congress or signed into law by the President, which means that it cannot be reviewed by the Supreme Court as to the Constitutionality as a law. Now here’s an abuse by the Republican Party and this administration, and an abuse that has been instituted a number of times. I am talking about an insidious and purposeful abuse, which needs to be brought to light so that the perpetrators of such law breaking can be brought to justice. What I am talking about is the substitution of George Bush’s original Patriot Act, which was rejected by both houses of Congress. That’s right. Congress did not vote on the Patriot Act that is now the law of the land. Congress voted and approved a different bill, and the Bush administration, obviously with the consent of the Republican Majority in both houses, allowed the original Patriot Act to replace the Congressionally approved bill with a 4 AM printing such that one Democrat Senator lamented on the Senate floor "This is not the bill we agreed to. The paper is still warm and we need to take some time to make certain that the bill before us is in fact the bill to which both houses of Congress have agreed." It was not the bill Congress had agreed to. A clear case of abuse being illegal. We can also see the abuse of the President in signing bills into laws. This president has not once signed a bill into law without adding signing statements suggesting that he, the President of the United States, is not required to "faithfully execute the law" if HE finds that the law in question is unconstitutional. Well, forgive me, but this abuse sets up the potential for again establishing a precedent thus moving abuse into law by virtue of the lack of opposition. The President doesn’t have the right to declare any law unconstitutional. Such a declaration is not within his purview as established by the Constitution itself, and thus signing statements trying to establish the ability to declare a law unconstitutional is itself unconstitutional. We’re not talking about the President being able to assume the power to declare laws unconstitutional because it wasn’t specifically disallowed in the Constitution under Article II. No, we are talking about the fact that Article III pertaining to the Judiciary is the only place that the Founding Fathers talked about the purview of Constitutionality of law. Therefore, if only the Judiciary has the ability to declare a law unconstitutional, then the President may not claim that right for himself via a signing statement. One only has to look at the recent administration misdirection in Congressional testimony in Senate hearings by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to which, "The Constitution does not guarantee the right of Habeas Corpus to a Citizen. It only guarantees that the right cannot be suspended without certain circumstances prevailing." This is a statement aimed towards garnering powers not bestowed upon the presidency by the Constitution and suggests that the presidential signing statements are based upon the same effort to grab said power. Again, if power is not granted by the Constitution, then the power is not present. The bastardization of this principle by Alberto Gonzales shows his politicization within the Justice Department and the effort to interpret law rather than faithfully executing said law. Now I’ve already recently written about this under a blog titled "Alberto Gonzales is a Legal Idiot", but it bears repeating every once in a while so that people understand just what has been happening in the Justice Department as it becomes a more politicized entity. First, whilst Gonzales might not have written the memo suggesting that the law of the land by the adoption of the Geneva Conventions was "quaint and outdated" (that memo was written by John Woo, currently a political science professor at Georgetown, I believe), he was the man who authorized such tripe to be forwarded to the President as an ACTIONABLE interpretation of this country’s laws. Hence, AND TO THE SHAME OF AMERICA, torture has been redefined to effectively mean "torture until dead" and the Executive has, without legal challenge or congressional approval, negated a treaty with 130 other countries in the world. How not? For the other 129 signatories of the treaty torture still means the same thing it did prior to George W. Bush. But for the US it is somehow different now, under the guise of "clarification and definition". This is abuse with legal ramifications and yet no one is up in arms about it because as they come to realize these abuses, they get barraged again with even more abuses by this administration. And this, in itself is an abuse. It is an abuse in the same way that the Clinton administration was beset by numerous and myriad Republican allegations of corruption such that the administration need pay attention to their defense so that the American agenda could not go forward. This current administration is besetting the American people with so many abuses as to keep them befuddled and guessing, which is just what one Bush administration official said in 2002. "We make the reality, and when you think you’ve figured out that reality, we’ve changed it again." As we see, there are plenty of abuses, some of which are nefarious and purposeful, yet not illegal, some which are illegal. We see that the Republican Party and the Administration have an agenda to garner more and greater power to the President whilst using that power to deter legal actions on some and encourage legal action on others. But what many may not see is the fundamental change in American politics that allows, ostensibly through the sheep-like commitment of the American people, this administration to change the bedrock of American society, American justice and the American way of life. America is indeed becoming a sad country, wallowing in its own despair without a single champion to defend her. And here I thought that the President’s oath of office meant that the President was supposed to be America’s champion. How stupid of me. 11:55:04 AM    comment []

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Today’s Topic: Kalid Sheikh Mohammed and Truth Again we see a time of trouble for the present Administration and some "revelation" about how terrorism is our worst enemy. Now I’m not against the idea of terrorism being a heinous enemy, but I continue to doubt the timing of released information from people that may well have been tortured in order to garner information. Supposedly Kalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) has somehow come to his senses during his 3 year stint in CIA based prisions and now, once sent to Gitmo, has decided to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Where is it that the powers that be cannot see the disconnect between 3 years in tight confinement and possible torture during the CIA incarceration, and the military tribunal message he presented and which has now be released to the public? We are talking about something that defies realistic and deliberate thinking. Why, for instance, was it said before that KSM was less forthcoming even as American intelligence agents held his son’s life in their hands? Why come through with all the possible threats to America and others as if these actions were a brand of courage? Well, one possibility is that his statements were indeed a brand of courage, but I assume that the Jihadists wouldn’t think so. And the fact is that anyone who has had torture applied for 3 plus years is suspect in their pronouncements. The question would be whether KSM had any knowledge of his supposed plans prior to hearing about them, if indeed he heard about them at all during his CIA incarceration. Now I’m not saying that KSM didn’t come up with the list, but if in fact he did, then terrorists all over the world no longer have a "mastermind" simply due to the fact that nothing major has happened in the world since his capture. Someone that could be considered a mastermind would only come perhaps once or twice in a generation, and nothing suggests that if there were two they would both be on the same side. The point of all this is not to say the KSM didn’t say the things our military declares he said, but whether he had foreknowledge or postknowledge and made use of the information to confuse the issues, the timelines and the people who have to continue looking for the culprits. For if KSM was the deciding factor in these efforts, and he has been behind some set of bars for such a period of time, then indeed the governmental agencies responsible for the safety of Americans across the world have either done a great job or, if he is not responsible, then a great snow job. How will we be able to tell? President Bush is under a great amount of stress right now, what with coming home after a tumultuous South American trip and Alberto Gonzales’ statements to Congress that no political process was involved with the dismissal of eight sitting US Attorneys whilst at least one was replaced with a Rove supporter. We have 8.500 more troops going to Iraq and back to Iraq, over and above the 21,500 supposedly to cover the surge, some thousand or so that are medically substantiated as unfit for combat. We have thousands of troops that have been put into warehousing whilst still serving in the active military until they can be transferred to the VA and they have been living in squalor at Walter Reed. We have assaults on the Patriot Act since the FBI can’t seem to come up with reasonable figures on how many citizens rights were stepped on through national security letters, and we have an interim election that has given Bush a mandate on changing the "stay the course" concept of fighting a losing war. My point is that since there are so many negatives about the administration, and the administration itself is fighting for its very life, I don’t find it plausible that one individual being under duress if not tortured for the past three years would actually be truthful about any of his activities. Rather he would say at some point along the way whatever his captors had wanted to hear. So again it comes down to what KSM knew before the attacks he claims to have planned, or whether he came about this knowledge from interrogators that simply let things slip in an effort to coerce him into statements. This is the problem with torture, and the real problem with torture isn’t that someone might say anything their torturers might want to hear as much as it is that an administration would accept such a level of admission of guilt. It is bad enough that this administration chose to accept the suggestions of Chalabi amongst others, but even worse if whether what they continue their operations on are simply admissions under torture. This President has told us time and again that the United States does not torture, and yet we can assume that it does because the fear they spread throughout the land is a brand of torture sinking into the hearts of each American. If the administration can try to hold down the people through fear, then it isn’t surprising that they could extract admissions of guilt from people though the fear invested by torture. The real question comes down to whether this administration suborns torture or not, and the only way to look at the question is to accept what this President has put into signing statements over the years. For it appears that while this administration suggests that it doesn’t support torture it has, time and time again, chosen to submit signing statements questioning the Constitutionality of such laws that would prohibit torture. And there in lies the crux. If this administration hadn’t supported the use of torture we probably wouldn’t have this problem now. Is Kalid Sheikh Mohammed speaking from his experience or is he subject to torture? If the latter he cannot be trusted in his statements. If the former then how are we, the American people supposed to decide? With this administration calling again and again on the terrorist acts supposedly scheduled to occur, and the possibility of torture bringing meaningful information to the forefront, then I don’t believe that Americans will ever know which is correct. And this is exactly the place this administration would like to have the American people. 1:23:54 PM    comment []

Monday, March 12, 2007

Today’s Topic: Libby Doesn’t Deserve a Pardon If Martha Stewart could be convicted and sent to prison for lying to the FBI and obstructing justice, then the fact is that Scooter Libby deserves to fall to the same fate. The problem isn’t that Scooter was inappropriately targeted for prosecution, but the reverse is true. Scooter Libby was indicted and convicted because he chose to hide facts necessary to find out the truth about the outing of a NOC CIA agent, period. By his own choice, as I’d mentioned before his trial, Scooter fell upon his own sword to cover for his bosses. And politically it has the advantage of killing any further investigation because the only avenue from Scooter to anyone higher up is a closed avenue. If Scooter is willing to lie to protect Vice President Cheney then indeed he has done so. The logic, as Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald outlined it in his announcement of Scooter’s indictment, stands to reason. If lies and deceit are the outcome of the testimony, then the possibility of finding out the truth is obstructed. This is why there is an obstruction of justice law on the books. If you can prove that one is lying to cover their tracks, and you suspect that those tracks lead back to a higher authority, then in fact we are talking about obstruction of justice. The proof is in Dick Cheney’s own handwriting, suggesting that "the Pres", quickly struck out and negated by other terminology, was the person requesting action on an in-actionable situation. To try to institute a political character assassination against a vocal opponent by means of such extremes as to actually name a CIA NOC is unconscionable, and requires the extreme legal remedies to guarantee that freedom of speech reigns true. For you see, freedom of speech isn’t limited to the individual, but gathered up unto the whole so that true freedom may reign without suppression. Idealistic, I know. For if indeed we could achieve the concept of freedom of speech for all Americans then we truly would be free and those that would infringe on this right would be held accountable. Ah, but there is a problem even if freedom of speech were a truly noble exercise of one’s rights, for there would always be those willing to fall upon their own swords in order to protect others. History shows this to be true, and until we, as a people, can hold individual actions to a higher ideal than those presented by day to day politics, then we, as Americans, cannot really regard ourselves as free. It makes no difference whether we can speak our minds as most would assume that freedom of speech represents. What makes the difference is if those privy to certain knowledge have the ability to determine right from wrong and speak their minds without fear of reprisal. A couple of years ago I wrote about how the concept of freedom of speech isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution, but rather by those that adhere to the concepts of the Constitution. Therefore, if you try to stand in the public square and get shouted down for your views then you have no observable freedom of speech. In other words, no one actually has the right to freedom of speech unless those around you give you the right to free speech. There is a conundrum here in that I can try to say what I wish to say, but those that don’t wish to listen can shout me down, and yet I actually still have freedom of speech. But there’s another avenue whereby freedom of speech doesn’t hold true and that is within environments like this administration whereby secrets are the order of the day and lies have to be told about those secrets. And some of those lies can be harmful and purposely aimed at those expressing their freedom of speech rights. Again, freedom of speech is the right to speak your mind without fear of reprisal. Once people can lie about one thing it is true that they can lie about another and then it comes down to the fact that one cannot trust the other as to whether truth or lies are being told. This is the conundrum that George W. Bush faces now. There is nothing this man can say that can be taken to be the truth because he has foisted lie after lie upon us. Even if he tells the truth there is nothing that says any particular American will believe him because he has told lies enough to guarantee that anyone will believe him all the time. He has required others to lie about this administration’s efforts and has gone to extraordinary efforts to cover his tracks as he continues to tell new lies to cover the old. It is, in fact, amazing to me that a full 30% of Americans still believe a man that lies as easily as he dons a Navy flight suit as if he were a competent Navy flier. Thank God that George W. Bush never fought in Viet Nam. I’m pretty certain that at least 100 men came home alive and whole because this idiot didn’t get command of anything. But the real problem lies in just what Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald told us in his indictment announcement. His reasoning for prosecuting Scooter Libby was because Scooter, by lying, was indeed obstructing justice for the American people who could not get at the truth. This one man has the truth about what lies behind the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, but if he’s going to lie about it, we will never have the facts necessary to carry forward more investigation nor bring these investigations to a true close. So the deed is done and true accountability for illegal actions by this administration may never come to light as long as Libby is willing to be impaled upon his sword. Now I don’t care about how the Republican spin machine suggests that Scooter deserves a pardon and that he didn’t do anything more wrong than have a faulty memory (one suggestion which belies the other). Well, the pardon inherently holds the taint of guilt, and a man with a faulty memory wouldn’t be the Chief of Staff for the most powerful Vice President in American history if he weren’t firing on all cylinders. It is not possible. It is not just improbable, it is not possible. And yet supposedly the republican spin machine would have us think that such a man as Dick Cheney would allow a man with a faulty memory to run the day to day concerns of the Office of the Vice President. Just the thought of it doesn’t even make sense even with testimony to the contrary. I’m not saying that this administration hasn’t placed incompetent people in positions of power throughout the differing agencies, for it is painfully obvious that they have. But it is a little hard to accept a scenario where scheduled meetings with the Vice President were forgotten, or arrangement for trips to the CIA to push for different intelligence were botched due to a faulty memory, etc., and that these daily lapses of memory would be acceptable to a megalomaniac such as Dick Cheney. So you see that if Dick Cheney started a vendetta against Ambassador Joe Wilson for his repudiating the administration’s use of faulty information and leading the United States people into a false reasoning for war, then without Scooter Libby’s truthful testimony there is no case against Dick Cheney or George Bush. If the right wing can continue to hourly denounce this verdict then the end result is even worse than missing an opportunity for holding those responsible for breaking the law accountable. For the end result will be the continued misleading of the American people and the undermining of the people’s right to know who the lawbreakers are. No, Scooter Libby does not deserve a pardon, for such an act by President George W. Bush would scuttle any leverage Patrick Fitzgerald currently has over Libby to encourage his truthful and complete testimony, regardless of where that testimony leads. Without such testimony this administration will have again taken down the rights of the people a notch or two, and there aren’t but so many notches left to us. If Scooter Libby does receive a pardon, even forgetting that accepting one is an admission of guilt, then there can only be one reasonable point of view on such an action. And that view is that this President has something to hide in the matter. Perhaps it is only plain to me, but it appears that Bush’s authorization for Cheney’s declassification of the "in question" portions of the National Intelligence Estimate represents Presidential foreknowledge of the process to discredit Joe Wilson. This means that the President is just as involved in outing a secret CIA agent, which is clearly against the law. And it might be added that this law, by the way, was instituted by this President’s father and signed into law by the same. And so we have just one more observable abuse of power by the Bush/Cheney administration and I. "Scooter" Libby should be held accountable for his part in the abuses. If any feel that this is reaching beyond the realm of justice then just remember that if a person can lie to you about one thing, they can, and probably will, lie to you about anything. 5:14:12 AM    comment []

Monday, March 05, 2007

Today’s Topic: The Problem With Ethanol Not that I actually have a problem with ethanol, but rather the implications that mainstream America may surmise from the importance that is currently being placed on this alternative fuel source. This one is pretty simple at its base. Ethanol will not stop global warming because the exhaust emissions of millions of vehicles will still be putting out pollutants. If nothing else, carbon dioxide and monoxide levels will continue to grow. If we are going to look at one problem and we have two problems based on a particular product, then we should look at both problems simultaneously and thus kill two birds with one stone. Ethanol, as a fuel, is a far less efficient energy producer than gasoline, thus either we come up with less powerful vehicles or we use larger amounts of ethanol. Now since ethanol IS a continuous source of energy, perhaps the lesser fuel efficiency is acceptable if you don’t look at the continued growth of atmospheric pollutants, but a more readily available fuel source is only part of the problem. If, in fact, we are to move away from petroleum based fuels to become energy independent, then we need to understand that it is still necessary to curtail atmospheric pollutants. This idea means either coming up with new ways to use a more readily available fuel source or to come up with some means of curtailing the pollutants involved, whilst still offering the ability of a fuel source that can power the nation. Ethanol is so inefficient of a fuel source that it is not being considered for anything but powering cars and trucks, boats and lawnmowers. If it were efficient enough in giving off enough heat to generate electricity than I might be more behind it. But in fact I am firmly behind it for the purposes of fueling electrical generation in vehicles so that most of the cost both in terms of lessening fuel costs and in using electricity in most modes of transportation would provide tremendous benefits. In other words, it is time to redesign the automobile industry by governmental regulations. I know, many a Republican will be concerned that their oil brethren will be sinking into the morass of their own devising, but the fact is that they can easily become partners in alternative efforts in fuel. With government regulations most times some perks come to those being regulated. Even though those will fight this regulation on the side of big oil, the fact is that minimal investment from these companies could easily reap great profits. That would be something the oil industry couldn’t complain about, since it costs up to billions of dollars to invest in research and development of new oil fields or new technology for continuing to reap benefits from older fields previously held as "tapped out". The auto industry would do well to realize that electrical generation by small motors would reap a lot of benefits for the average American family and thus could quickly recover the costs for changing over production lines towards building more hybrid technology vehicles. They would also be helping America do its part in lessening the exhaust emissions that will continue to drive up the warmth of the planet. Ah, but here’s the rub. Many of both the oil industry and auto industry are banking on global warming to open up new trade routes in the north and providing for exploration of new possible oil sites. While the new trade routes might indeed provide for quicker shipment of cargo, thus relieving some stress on the environment, it does nothing to promote alternative fuels. So big oil and the auto industry have stakes in the continuation of the current situation. Well, like I said, the concept of regulation usually also means that some type of large carrot needs to be on the stick in order to lead these industries out of their staid position. The funny thing is that hybrid technology isn’t a new idea at all. It is exactly the same situation that has been in use in both the older "pre-nuclear" subs and in railroad locomotives for over 50 years. The idea of building oil burning engines to develop electricity that can be stored and use is nothing new. The hybrid cars of today do virtually the same thing. The problem isn’t that the concept is new and requires a lot of research and development, but rather that most people view vehicles powered by electricity as being anemic and lacking performance. Nothing could be further from the truth. But on to exhaust emissions. American vehicle manufacturers chose to use catalytic converter to bring down emissions, but Honda knew that emissions were the result of high revving engines rather than something that needed to be contained after generation. Chevrolet has also learned this 25 years after Honda realized it and actually offers decent gas mileage on a number of their products. Still, they lose money because they offer way too little in the way of real change in American transport. We need both a change of the oil industry/auto industry and the habits of the people of American in order to offer real and relatively quick changes to oil/carbon production and the adverse effects. After all, if a small engine powered by either gas or ethanol can idle and produce enough electricity to power the vehicle and charge a reasonable bank of batteries, then mileage would go up exponentially. So the perk of regulation is an investment of taxpayer’s money in order to quick-track the development of even newer systems, but also to ease the burden of transition in the energy and vehicle producing industries. I’ll be back later to continue my four part series. 12:47:21 PM    comment []

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Today’s Topic: More of the Same, Pt 2 My last couple of blogs have been in line with defining not only what has gone before from a historic viewpoint, but to illuminate those wishing to use their gray matter to foresee what just might be coming down the road. But after hearing Seymour Hersh’s new revelations of administration misconduct and reading William Rivers Pitt’s new column for Truthout, dated 28 Feb 2007, "The Bush Administration in One Sentence", I’d have to agree with the opening line quoted from Henry Ford, which was "History is bunk." One should easily be able to see the direct connection between history being bunk and an oft quoted senior Bush administration official’s statement that "we make the realities, and by the time you think you’ve figured them out, we make new realities." Now it isn’t all that surprising that Henry Ford and George W. Bush think that history is a tale to be ignored, because there is a direct link from Henry Ford to George W. Bush in history and it is both Henry Ford’s and Prescott Bush’s support for the Nazi regime during 1933 and forward. George W. Bush’s father’s fortune is based on a number of his own earnings, but the underpinnings of such earnings have been nefarious since Adolph Hitler took control of Germany and include making money off of slave labor provided by the Nazis from the Jews incarcerated in concentration camps, either to work or die. So how does Henry Ford work into the above? Henry Ford was an ardent Hitler supporter who had banking and investment interests in Prescott Bush’s bank (Harriman/Brown Bros.). The same bank that was shut down by FDR during the early 40s for dealings with the enemy. And the same Brown family that is now a part of Kellogg, Brown and Root, or as they are now known, KBR, as large subsidiary of Halliburton. However, it still appears that history isn’t all that important to today’s American, so we’ll forget the history thing and let Henry Ford win that round. But if we, the American public, don’t learn the truth of the words "He who ignores the lessons of history is bound to repeat them," then what George Bush’s administration started and continues to do today is going to be just as much of a mystery. The mystery is that this administration, from day one, has been trying to rewrite history as history itself is being written, and the problem with that effort is that the real history catches up with you, especially if you don’t really know the real history. The consequences are that one’s credibility becomes suspect and if the public takes a good look at what is being said today by both the administration and the few Congressional lackeys they have remaining, one can see that this administration has absolutely no sense of history at all. And this is their downfall and their election our bane. For if we can’t see the lies used by this administration’s efforts to create an imperial America, then one won’t realize that historic imperialistic endeavors have evolved from very basic subterfuge and lies. A good example was pointed out by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC in his Monday tirade about MS and PH.D Condi Rice, our illustrious Secretary of State, having so grossly misstated history in 42 words as to possibly being the loser in a debate with fifth graders, (my misrepresentation of his far longer diatribe). And I concur. There was also the funny idea of Davy Crockett getting a Blackberry message at the Alamo, but how wrong can an elected representative be? Wrong both in reciting history and in misapplication of analogies, for why would Congress talk to Davy Crockett when the Alamo was not an effort in a Mexican-American war authorized by Congress, but a smaller part of a Mexican Revolutionary War when American citizens colonized Texas and fought Mexico’s control of the area. I guess the Republicans just think that whatever action happened anywhere with Americans involved had a Congressional Declaration of War and Presidential support. Again, I cannot conceive of how else Republicans could still be trying to change the focus of the debate by lying about history. I would really love to read the memo from the RNC that explains how stupid Americans are. History is bunk. What an eye opening statement when taken in context with the Ford/Bush historical ties and the current administration’s efforts to rewrite history before they have actually accomplished anything. History is written by the victors. Shouldn’t the Bush administration have at least won something before they start re-writing history? And shouldn’t Americans be smart enough to recognize the lies? 10:04:14 AM    comment []

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Today’s Topic: More of the Same Stunning incompetence I believe Joe Conason said in a 23 Feb 2007 commentary for AlterNet. Stunning incompetence indeed. Purposeful degradation of the Constitution, ignoring all history and law that has gone before, George W. Bush is trying to forge a new America cast in the burned out ruins of Germany’s Third Reich. We no longer have the opportunity to allow this administration to continue. We have to take back America now so that America really means AMERICA. But first we need to again come to the realization that all things Bush have become the opposite of what America really means, and that includes the religious right who have become so bellicose that war seems alright even if their children are dying for a mission that has no end. But it also means that the neo-cons still hold sway over the office of the President and something as stupid as a fifth "surge" in Iraq isn’t going to achieve any of what the American public was told would happen. The newest lesson as to how Bush views the world comes as he supposes his "surge" is going to change anything when his efforts at diplomacy fall by the wayside. The lesson also includes the idea that regardless of how Americans voted in the 2006 elections, Bush has no concern of the way the electorate goes, because he is the "decider". Well, Georgie boy, we already know how bad your decisions are. Apparently you are the one that has no clue. George W. Bush and Richard Cheney need to be impeached. Period. If, in the end, the House of Representatives have presented the articles of impeachment, and the Senate votes on that impeachment, then regardless of what the outcome, the necessities of bringing this administration to trial will have been accomplished. But my guess is that whatever the charges, they won’t represent the damage that this administration has perpetrated upon the Constitution, and by their actions, they have destroyed the one thing they propose to save. By employing virtually all of the ideals of the Nazi regime in somehow tagging the populace and garnering all the information possible about the American citizens, this administration has stepped closer to true fascism even if they are too stupid to realize the errors of their ways. Joe Conason is an optimist when he suggests that such hasn’t happened yet nor will it in our lifetimes. It is far easier to look at the failures of this administration and wonder how anyone would accept the decision process that pervades the administra