Tom Tomorrow Comic: Neo-Con Regrets

Hilarious Tom Tomorrow strip from Salon.com. (h/t to C&L who posted a snippet on their page as well)

Steps to Take Back Our Country: Rewriting Our Textbooks

One of the least talked about ways that the Right Wing has infiltrated our daily lives is by brainwashing our children in the classrooms. It's been happening since big business got more influence in the direction of our public education's curriculum somewhere between 1890-1920.

Since then our history textbooks have been less about injecting actual history so much as they have blind patriotism into the ever molding minds of our children.

The America we think we all know is a group delusion. This group psychosis is from years of flag waving, non-controversial white washing of our history to take out most of the bad things America has done and present a glowing view of a country that is always good and always right.

It white washed the history of Christopher Columbus who committed genocide against the Arawak Indians. It purposely omitted that the Pilgrims, who supposedly suffered from religious persecution back home, came and did the same to Indians. They also directly and indirectly killed most of the neighboring Indian tribes through their own actions and through diseases they brought over that the Indians' immune system could not adjust to.

They spent years demonizing John Brown, a white man who fought battles to end slavery by calling him insane. They avoid slavery as a major factor in the Civil War and even try to re-frame it as a battle for Southern Rights. In fact they're even worse on Reconstruction in which they treat as a short phase where blacks were given some power and failed and the white Republicans that supported them were somehow incompetent and unpopular.

None of that is true but history textbooks aren't meant to tell you the truth. Truth would have you questioning the system.

For this very reason history textbooks never talk about social class either.

As James Loewen put it in his terrific book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (from pages 205-206):

Ultimately, social class determines how people think about social class. When asked if poverty in America is the fault of the poor or the fault of the system, 57 percent of business leaders blamed the poor; just 9 percent blamed the system. (Some replied "don't know" or chose a middle position.) The largest single difference between our two main political parties lies in how their members think about social class: 55 percent of Republicans blamed the poor for their poverty while only 13 percent blamed the system for it; 68 percent of Democrats, on the other hand, blamed the system while only 5 percent blamed the poor.

-snip-

Many teachers compound the problem by avoiding talking about social class. Recent interviews with teachers "revealed that they had a much broader knowledge of the economy, both academically and experientially, than they admitted in class." Teachers "expressed fear that students might find out about the injustices and inadequacies of their economic and political institutions." By never blaming the system American History courses thus present "Republican history".

This is entirely true. Republican history, and I'll re-frame this to RIGHT WING HISTORY since the Republican party was filled with different thinking people during Reconstruction, is the embodiment never blame the system because the 'rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their struggles' philosophy. This is what they stand for to their core.

These textbooks wave the flag much like FOX NEWS does, hoping the flag waving will distract you from the fact that they just spouted hate speech, slandered someone or totally lied and distorted facts.

In the history textbooks the facts ignored or distorted involve anyone of a different race (slavery was not that bad, Indians liked how they were treated, etc) or religion. This is evident when Christians are portrayed as believing in a civilized religion while any other form of religion, while equally provable as Christianity is, is considered some barbaric fools' religion. Native Americans worshipped animals and are mocked at times for it. Egyptians worshipped cats and the sun, Greeks had gods with different powers, Romans worshipped completely different gods until Constantine used brutality and needless wars to slaughter Christianity into power during the Roman Empire.

But as much as textbooks avoid religion, it is their tone towards other beliefs when describing other cultures that is condescending and sends the wrong message.

Another pro-right wing/pro-corporate view is that Unions are considered corrupt and useless old relic that are unnecessary now (although as we have seen with outsourcing and corporate greed in the past 30 years, strong unions are needed now more than ever). This view is pushed continuously in many different history textbooks.

These textbooks, the ones that are in classrooms around the country, are mind numbingly simple and boring. A presentation of partial facts and anecdotes done in a way to make kids grow up learning to respect and love their country.

What is the benefit to this? Those children who move on to college find themselves over their heads when confronted with an entirely different history they had not learned about.

The benefit comes to one group of people. Keeping people from finding out about the injustices of America when it comes to race and gender (or at least watering it down tremendously), our military actions abroad, or the inequalities of social classism creates passive students. Passive students never have the urge to fight back against the class war they are having waged against them every day. The rich stay atop the heap and nobody will take them or their dynasty families down.

To this point I am unaware of the extreme Right taking over our textbooks and inserting revisionist current history in there but you can tell it's just a matter of time. When Ronald Reagan died the mainstream media, owned mostly by a handful of right wing media moguls, glossed over the man as if he were a Saint. All of the class warfare he waged on the poor was lost to time. His efforts to arm Iran illegally (part of the problem we have there is our penchant to arm all sides of the conflict there out of sheer greed. Our monetary gains trump common sense policy and have angered, rightfully so, many citizens of the involved countries we did this with in that region) gone. No big deal now.

That was the first sign that modern history will be revised. There is an old saying that says "History is written by the winners". Well there are no bigger winners than the rich who own the publishing companies.

Last year we saw this revisionist version of right wing history make its way to ABC as a "docudrama" in "The Path to 9/11". It was bad enough that the movie ignored all the facts and blamed Bill Clinton for the whole attack while absolving George "You've covered your ass" Bush from his Administration's ignorance to warnings, but they went a step beyond TV.

They actually tried to distribute this to schools through Scholastic which has long been a trusted source for learning materials and book sales for schools for decades. Thankfully Scholastic pulled their materials and reworked them to avoid the controversy in this presentation.

In Japan, Right Wing textbooks have been distributed and caused all sorts of anger from neighboring countries. It too, whitewashed atrocities committed by Japanese troops in favor of blind Nationalism.

The outrage to the textbooks there should give Americans a template in which to show their own dissent towards what our children and their generation will be taught.

Rest assured though, the next ideological battlefront will be in the classrooms. In some respects they're already winning. A poll a couple years back asked high school students if "Freedom of the Press goes too far", to which 32% of students said yes. 36% thought Newspapers should get Government approval to run stories. Now all jokes about how close the lapdog media is to this concept aside, those are incredibly high numbers for high school students who are supposed to be taught about the strengths of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

That 30-35% is pretty close to the same number of people that support Bush and one could make an inference that many of those students probably are children to Bush Supporters and FOX NEWS viewers. Still in high school, we're supposed to be teaching them about the strengths of having civil liberties and rights and instead they believe we should chuck them in favor of fascism... which I am not sure they learned about considering their responses.

Then there's this wonderful gem that only furthers my theory that they are pressing to take this war to the classroom:



They're almost all there, although they're missing a couple... Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity spring to mind although in fairness maybe they couldn't fit them in.

Anyway that's a pretty large group of Right Wing Sycophants trying to get your classrooms and schools to include them in their curriculum and hang their poster on their walls.

To some degree I agree with them! No I don't want them writing our textbooks or rewriting our history but I agree they should be included!

After all what would history teach without the horrors of Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot?

Clearly history is about learning about the past. REAL history is about gaining a broad perspective of the time period, the characters involved in shaping it and taking from it lessons for the future.

As Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican no less) said, "Those who do not learn the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."

We need to know of the atrocities hoisted upon mankind to prevent ourselves from doing it again. Whether its a holocaust, slavery or even just derogatory attitudes from the time period it is a worthwhile message to learn the lesson and prevent ourselves from following the same foolhardy path.

Now I am not likening those Right Wing pundits above to Hitler (rather they seem to be closer to Joe McCarthy), but I do think they represent much of the morally and criminally corrupt enterprise that have pushed their agenda onto America, unfortunately for us, successfully over the past 14 years or so. Even those who are detrimental to society in every possible form should be included in the history of a time period.

These people are scourge no doubt. They label and demean citizens and politicians that disagree with their talking points or tactics as traitors or cowards or worse. They use dangerous hate speech calling for violence against people of other races, religions or sexuality. Still, they deserve inclusion in our texts.

What they must do (and unfortunately our current history textbooks that seem to do this presently for any American they include) is not perform any acts of idolatry on them.

Those with murderous intentions should be exposed for such. Those who speak of treasonous actions to be performed onto political opponents should be called to the carpet for such offenses.

In doing so we serve two purposes.

Firstly, we expose an incredibly dangerous and war mongering ideology. It teaches our children of the frailty of the American dream and ideal if we choose not to defend it against those who would dispose of it in the name of absolute power.

Secondly, it gives us a narrative in which to avoid mistakes of the recent past.

Clearly Joe McCarthy was considered misguided at best, evil at worst and just as our opinions shifted towards him over time, through the lens of reflection we will see the evils of intolerance once more and these pundits will be cast in a similar unflattering historical view.

Ann Coulter pictured at her favorite politician's grave site:

One of the ways to bring America to be the progressive nation it claims to be and advance deeper into the 21st century as a respected voice and leader in the international community is to open the minds of our children so that they can handle the complexity of life that comes from complicated decision making questions.

Our textbooks don't need to be blatantly slanted to our point of view the way theirs would need to be to be successful in shaping liberal, progressive minds. All they have to do is tell the truth, present broader context of historical periods, empathize with both sides. If they do that people will learn to accept the complexity in situations and approach their own life decisions with an open mind in anticipation of the shades of grey that life provides.

Maybe George W. Bush said it best (yes I just said that) when he said, "Is Our Children Learning?".

Grammatically incorrect as that might be, it presents a good question about our education system and the citizens that it produces.

Americans have been taught one view of our country. It is the very same thinking that presents the Black and White, Right or Wrong simplicity in our decision making process these days.

Absolution is easy. Once can come to their conclusions without much struggle or deliberation. On the other hand an open mind is scary.

If you think with rational clarity and have been taught to accept both sides of the story you have to conclude that the false reality of the "Good Guy Interventionist America" image that our textbooks create has failed us and that actual foreign policy based on this assertion has created justifiable enemies.

We might have to look to ourselves and take some personal responsibility for global warming as well. We might have to examine our lack of civil liberties and freedoms and determine that many European countries have done democracy better than us.

Opening our eyes to the shades of grey would cast doubts upon our purity as a nation.

As our children attend class everyday, one of the greatest affronts to our country is their education. For far too long our students have been taught distorted and many times false information under the guise that our textbooks should be teaching blind patriotism over truth.

It's time to re-write history with a new narrative. A narrative of open discussion of our sin as well as our success and treating people different from ourselves as respected equals rather than "savages", "barbarians" or worse might open a line of thinking where we put ourselves in the shoes of the people in other countries when making future decisions. We might just stop ourselves from getting into future wars and creating generational regional hatred towards us.

This is one of the places we need to take back. Now if only we had a Democratic money man who could take this cause on.

-Rp

Bush Administration Fueling/Funding Iraqi Civil War

Has anyone stopped to ask, "What if Bush doesn't want to win in Iraq"? I think it's a pretty solid question to ask.

It seems to me we're spending so much time expecting some sort of exit strategy from Iraq that we're missing the overall picture. That being that the Bush Administration is funding the Iraqi Civil War and trying to start World War III.

This sounds insane to the logical person but hear me out.

We're already in Iraq and Afghanistan creating chaos without any sort of plan. We refuse to pull out even if timelines and benchmarks are not reached. Why? What's in this for us? Oil?

Well the region is loaded with oil. So taking out various countries in the regions strengthens our grip on what's out there and available to US oil companies. It also makes certain friends of the corporations and their shareholders very rich when they determine the eaxct supply amount that is put on the market.

This however is something bigger. The Neo-Cons see this as a game of Risk. Taking one major region out is a means to strike and control another. They have been notably upset since the end of the Cold War and this certainly will stoke a new cold war (or possibly World War) with both Russia and China who most certainly would have their interests hurt by us controlling Iranian and Middle Eastern oil.

Consider this: The Bush Administration is now pushing for a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. You know, the host country for the majority of the 9/11 hijackers? Not to mention the home country of Osama Bin Laden. So he's arming the Saudis who are Sunnis and whom American officials contend are already playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

But wait, they're using our troops to protect the Shia government. Not to mention this is after the Pentagon helped Prime Minister al-Maliki train Shia death squads to slaughter Sunnis. This new deal arms both groups and puts our troops in the middle of a civil war.

Then you take a look at Iran. Hawks are pressing for war with Iran and the Administration already put out a release stating that they have a right to go to war with "rogue states" and "islamic terrorists" in 2002.

Their two main points in pressing this case are the same ones they tried unsuccessfully to make with Iraq. 1) They have or are trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction and 2) they are funding terrorists that are doing harm to the U.S. (or in this case our soldiers and Iraqi stabilization).

On the first issue we'd probably have been able to stop the Iranian nuclear program or at least know way more about it had they not outed the CIA's covert nuclear counter-profiliferation agent who was working on Iran, Valerie Plame. Of course we all heard how it was for "political" reasons because they wanted to get back at her husband, Joe Wilson, for exposing their lies on yellowcake uranium coming from Niger and being sought by Iraq.

The more logical explanation was that it shut down the CIA's undercover nuclear investigations in Iran and now with incomplete intelligence it makes the case for war that much easier to make. After all we have no idea just how far along their nuclear program is or what they have tried to obtain at this point.

Also we've been advising terrorists inside Iran to cause havoc there and inflame tensions with Ahmenijhad.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo that detailed plans to invade seven countries after 9/11, which General Wesley Clark brought up in this interview. It mentioned, "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran".

That sounds like a pretty big swath of countries in the ever growing in reality version of Neo-Con Risk.

And the tensions in Iraq only get worse. al-Maliki HATES Gen. Petraeus and is threatening to arm Shia Militias (in response to our arming the Sunnis) if we don't take him and his Bush-ordained view of Iraq out of there.

The funniest part is we already know what Petraeus will say in September because he follows Bush's orders (contrary to that BS line Bush gives about listening to his generals and not legislating what they do from Capitol Hill) and the White House has made sure to send them to RW shills like Fox and Hugh Hewitt to get their message out early.

Here he's causing more problems with Iraqi leadership, has pushed the Bush view on Iraq down their throats and is going to come back here and feed the same crap to us and we're supposed to take him at face value?

Of course at this point why should we take anybody in this Administration at face value on the tensions in the Middle East? It seems to me they'd rather fund terrorists, arm everybody and start a world war to take the entire region and create another century's worth of cold war with Russia and China.

If we fight them there, we don't have to fight them here. Riggghhhttt....

-Rp

"Activist Judges"

Remember that term? "Activist Judges"? That's the term Republicans threw around loosely in reference to judges that might uphold pro gay marriage laws in states like Massachussetts. Funny how they're pretty much staying away from that term now. Ever since they got Sam Alito (left) and John Roberts (right) onto the Supreme Court the entire judicial system seems to be swayed to their side.

From the Supreme Court on down to lower court judges (we'll get to that in a minute) the Bush Administration has used their power to position themselves to never lose regardless of what laws are broken.

What's worse is they're reshaping our key laws in record time.

Here's a quick scorecard.

-Ruled AGAINST racial integration at schools, thus basically overturning one of the most important cases in our country's history, Brown v. Board of Education.

-Ruled AGAINST freedom of speech, when they determined a kid having a sign that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" was not a freedom of speech issue and ruled in favor of a school punishing him.

-Ruled AGAINST separation of church and state and the establishment clause by ruling that taxpayers could not challenge Bush's faith based initiatives programs.

-Ruled AGAINST Women's Rights by being the first Supreme Court to uphold an abortion ban that allows no exceptions for the health of the woman.

-Ruled AGAINST gender equality in the workplace by restricting the rights of women to sue their employers for gender discrimination.

-Ruled FOR special interests running attack ads against candidates even beyond current government bans

If they're scoring at home that's Right Wing nutcases 6, America and the Constitution 0.

Now it's not just the Republican tilted Supreme Court that is leading the upheaval of rule of law. Obviously we all know what's happening the Justice Department, but it's the lower courts that are packed with Bush Appointees as well and are using their newfound power to assail our basic principles of constitutional establishment.

For example, the ACLU had won a considerable case striking a serious blow against Bush's illegal wiretapping program. It has been deemed illegal by just about every constitutionl scholar alive and is clearly so by the mere fact that Bush purposely sidestepped the FISA courts to do the wiretaps.

Well the Bushies appealed and once at an appellate level they had a 2-1 Republican appointee advantage at, the ACLU and previous ruling were struck down. Score another one against rule of law.

Then there's that wonderful Judge John D. Bates.

He got two high profile cases in the case of five years which his pals in the White House who appointed him got their money's worth.

First he was the judge that ruled that the Comptroller of the GAO had no right to sue for the records of Cheney's super secret Energy Task Force meetings. Of course now we know more about the meetings and how each oil company got individualized meetings while conservation groups were lumped together in short group meetings. It was obvious who the attention was going to. Transcripts of what was actually said at these meetings though still is not available and probably for good reason. As we've seen through pretty much every policy during this Administration's two terms, the oil companies are priority one.

Then today he saved them again. He ruled that Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent who was actually working in the nuclear counter proliferation unit trying to figure out what Iran has, could not sue Vice President Cheney, Scooter Libby and all the cretins in the White House who were involved in leaking her name to the press and ruining her career.

Chalk another one up for the bad guys.

Bates owes his current position to the Bush Administration who appointed him in 2001. Oh, and we get to look forward to this lack of wisdom on the FISA courts now as Republican Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to that court (in addition to his current duties) in 2006.

But hey the kicker is probably why the guy got the promotion in the first place.

According to his bio:

Judge Bates was on detail as Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to mid-1997.

So there you have it. He was one of the hacks who hunted down Bill Clinton's sex life in the right wing's attempt to impeach him.

Sadly enough, in Republican bizarro world it all comes back to Clinton.

-Rp

The Dumbest Man in America?

Yes that's Weekly Standard founder and frequent FOX NEWS contributor William Kristol pretending to shoot a gun. I imagine he likes to pretend he's shooting a gun and playing war, kind of like me and my friends did when we were like Nine.

How else could this guy continually be so wrong and so dumb on issues of war? The man has had pretty much every prediction he has ever made blow up in his face when it comes to Iraq. In fact Glenn Greenwald has about 14 of them right here.

Then, as if that weren't enough, he went out advocating a war with Iran.

Maybe he was trying to get ahead of the curve. After all he and his buddies (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Quayle, etc) have a doctrine for an American Empire as part of their thinktank group, "Project for a New American Century". War with Iran would most obviously take the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts and turn them into a Middle Eastern based World War III.

He came out swinging again in an editorial he wrote for next week's edition of The Weekly Standard entitled, get this, "Keep On Surgin'". Yeah it's fun over there didn't you know?

In his column he says the following:

Over the last few months, the United States (finally) surged in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has now surged against the surge. Iran is surging against the surge. We're pushing them back. Now the Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, and the foreign policy establishment have mounted their own surges against the surge. So far, Bush is beating them back. If Bush can hang tough, and General Petraeus can keep on surging, the Defeatists will fail. And the United States will have a good chance to succeed in Iraq.

This guy has to be the dumbest guy in America. Considering he was Chief of Staff to Dan Quayle and considering the idiocy of Bush and Cheney that's an incredible feat to lay claim to. But while Bush and Cheney wrestle for another title, "Most Dangerous Man in America, Kristol gets dumbest hands down. Luckily his effect on actual policy comes from pundity on television and a magazine rather then direct advisory to the Bush White House. But you would never know it since they have followed his exact words thusfar and been wrong on every single thing they have claimed would happen.

I wish I could get paid making ridiculous bullshit up and just consistently predicting false concepts that would come out of the war.

Week after week he's on FOX NEWS, granted they have no care for or concept of pesky facts anyway, but he's on there commenting on the latest news and predicting the next steps.

This is like getting an NFL handicapper that you're paying for betting advice on going 0-14 every week and even though he hasn't won a single game for you, you're calling him on Week 16 taking his picks again. Apparently you didn't learn a damn thing from the first 15 weeks, and neither has FOX, Kristol or this Administration.

Maybe Kristol can serve a purpose. He can keep predicting what we should do and we can do the opposite. After all, a 100% success rate would be a pretty fantastic thing when we haven't had a single success in Iraq other than deposing of Saddam Hussein (who clearly ran the country better than we have).

-Rp

"They Still Have No Plan"

It's the same old song and dance with Bush and his supporters. Right Wing rag, The Washington Times unveiled a ton of gall today by attacking Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Iraq today. They published a hit piece entitled, "They Still Have No Plan" in their editorial section.

Essentially it's a criticism that Democrats have no plan for post-withdrawal Iraq. I'm not sure what plan they are looking for but it seems to be their go to criticism on Democrats when it comes to their opposition to this war. Ever since 2003 when we went in the media has been carrying this Right Wing meme that 'Democrats have no plan so they have no right to criticize Bush'.

That makes absolutely no sense so let's shoot this one down quick.

1. The Democrats were in the MINORITY all the way up until this year. They couldn't pass a damned thing if they wanted to. Every plan at that point was up to Republicans and Bush to come up with.

2. The Democrats currently do not have a VETO PROOF majority. The obstructionist Republicans who want endless war like Bush are still there shooting down opposition to his war.

3. The Bush Administration hasn't had a plan since day one! Tony Blair knew it. They just thought they could roll in and everyone would throw flowers and chocolates their way.

4. There does not need to be a plan. Withdraw to the outside borders and then pull out completely. The ONLY way Iraq will work is if they come to a solution on their own. Our very presence there makes it impossible for the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to come up with any sort of political solution. One side always views the other with disdain over our presence and many Iraqis of all persuasions are joining in on attacks on us because they don't want our empirical presence. What plan is there to have?

Iraqis have a national pride that is in shambles by our presence. The Iranians won't be able to just swoop in and take over and I'm not even sure Iranian President Ahmenijhad wants to get caught up in this mess currently. If he did the Saudis would become even more involved and the Iraq War would become a full on Middle Eastern civil war. He would have much more to lose in waging a war with the Sunnis than sitting back and waiting to see how things shake out politically in Iraq.

We're pulling out to protect our troops and give Iraqis a chance to decide on their own what future their country will have. As I stated a few days ago, when given the chance after the American Revolution we messed with things a bit and had some uprisings and riots of our own but we got through it. We can't sit there and play babysitter to a country that is uniting behind one cause: us leaving immediately.

Strangely enough Bush's post war plan has been to send in one surge of troops afters another and none of them work. Then those people behind this idiotic surge like John McCain, have no Plan B in case it doesn't work. Since it won't I guess that means the Bush plan is that "We're Fucked".

Finally and I really want to know this. Why are Republicans always asking what our plans are anyway? Every time they get criticized on this war they pull this tired argument out of their ass. They ignore our plans anyway. John Kerry came up with a very comprehensive plan for the Iraq War and eventual redeployment during his 2004 campaign. The media ignored it and continued (with the help of right wing pundits) to claim he had no plan.

I know the Republicans are too stupid to come up with a plan of their own. Using religious faith never really gets you through real life situations after all. But to continually put the failure of Bush's War on the Democrats who really have never had the power to stop this thing and don't currently because they lack the 60 votes for cloture in the Senate, is just a cheap political ploy made by a bunch of desperate hacks.

Republicans have never had a plan for winning the war in Iraq. As my last post details, the only planning they ever did was lining their buddies' pockets.

Speaking of finances, after the last time Republicans got twelve years to run their failure of an economic plan entitled "trickle down economics" they ran up record deficits and put us on the verge of serious recession.

Democrats got into office and eliminated over twelve years of damage in just eight.

Oh, maybe that's it! They have no ideas and nothing they ever come up with works. Democrats are the best at cleaning up their messes. It all makes sense now why we have to do the work they can't do for themselves.

Sort of like an infant that shits in their diaper but can only cry hoping for an adult to change it. We're the adults. And hey, Republicans love their diapers don't they?

-Rp

Political Terror

"Ooooh! See that? It's a car bomb! Muslims really are terrorists and al Qaeda MUST be behind this! They were Doctors in England? Blame Michael Moore's Sicko! Let's put this out there and scare people back to our party!" - Some ridiculous Republican Strategist Somewhere.

The sad part is it seems they actually want terror attacks to happen. The Chair of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan and oh yeah, whack job Rick Santorum have actually SAID they want terror attacks. They think it would be for the good of the country to bring the people back to the Bush policy.

That photo above came last week from Glasgow. Like most every plot that the Bush Administration has hyped since 9/11 to try to artificially trump up their case for an endless war on terror, this one was not a big deal either. A few agitated muslim doctors with no real connection to anyone got together with a very uneducated attempt to light their car on fire and drive it into a building. Except it didn't really blow up the way they wanted and in fact they had to push the car the last part of the distance. Clearly these were not the 9/11 masterminds at work.

As with every moment when the political heat gets really going, Bush and the Right Wing try to up the fear level. This time they are clearly under fire for breaking the law and committing a felony by ordering two White House aides to ignore subpoenas and not testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee Hearings held yesterday morning.

As usual, Bush tried to distract and deflect. When Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor either outright refused to show or gave selective testimony while claiming executive privilege on harder questions, Bush held one of his rare press conferences on Iraq. Every major network cut into their daily programming for it and the presser was pointless. It was more confirmation of exactly the same talking points he and his other White House lackeys have been spouting for quite some time. More of the same. Stay the Course. Aka, no real plan.

That generally worked but the night before another Bush Administration official decided to plant a generally larger seed with the media to throw them off the trail. Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff came out with this ridiculous tripe about having a "gut feeling" about a possible terror attack in the Summer. He purposely attempted to put distance between his gut and the facts but it had the media either so bent over in laughter or so pressing for White House comment that not once in that presser did a single reporter talk about those pesky subpoenas.

Of course this is not the first time they have pulled this. It's become a very irritating pattern with this Administration that when the going gets tough, the terrorists somehow get tougher.


Countdown with Keith Olbermann did a great piece on how the Bush Administration does this late last year entitled, "The Nexus of Politics and Terror". It puts together a timeline of elevated threat levels and rhetoric versus the scandals of the moment. Crooks and Liars split it into two parts and below are links to the video of this.

WMV Part One Part Two
QT Part One Part Two


The problem with all of this is, who do we or who can we even believe anymore? Obviously not the Bush Administration. While they play the terror card to keep whatever is left of the flock of sheep in line, we are in Iraq making new terror enemies every day just by our mere presence in the region.

The man responsible for this entire war supposedly, Osama Bin Laden, is not a top priority for this Administration anyway.

Remember this? During a debate with John Kerry in 2004 Bush says that he never said he wasn't concerned about Bin Laden, even calling it an "exaggeration". Except for the video proof of the comment.



As it turns out, he wasn't lying about not being concerned. He spoke with his good friend and apologist, Fred Barnes of that Right Wing Rag, The Weekly Standard. In their conversation, Barnes says, Bush told him that capturing Bin Laden is ‘not a top priority use of american resources’. Barnes even went back to the Bush Network, er, FOX NEWS and told them as much.

They've had multiple chances to get this guy. In February 2001, the Adminstration rejected the Taliban's offer to give him up to them in exchange for a drop of sanctions. See for yourself in this brief clip from a presser where they refuse to talk about it.



Then in December 2001, they had him cornered at Tora Bora and let him get away.

Then after all these years where we know he's been in Pakistan, we find out that Bush basically outsourced the war to the Pakistanis. Giving them $1 billion a year in funding and demanding no results or accountability for that money.

He shut down the CIA unit responsible for hunting Bin Laden down. And then, after not caring about whether either Afghanistan or Iraq were sovereign countries before invading, he refused to invade Pakistan claiming... wait for it... that they were a sovereign country.

In fact when Republicans try to drum up terror for support (they have no ideas for this country anymore, their only card is to scare you into voting for their lunacy) they use the ridiculous TV show 24 as some sort of barometer of what can really happen. In their Presidential debates they actually debated to what extent torture is okay because it worked for Jack Bauer and saved a major U.S. city!

But in their arguments based off that show (produced by FOX no less), they always talk of terrorists getting nukes and setting off a dirty bomb against us.

Strange then how we take no action against Pakistan who let the one guy buying and selling these nukes on the black market to terrorists, A.Q. Khan to be free. Not to mention we allowed the Pakistan Government to order us not to question the guy. The guy is clearly able to operate again.

So from all of this what have we learned? The Bush Adminstration does not care about the war on terror. Don't let their aides, lackeys or politically bought and paid for Congressmen tell you otherwise. Terror is a political tactic, a form of control for them. Strangely enough that is exactly what terror is to the actual terrorists.

We have no interest in getting Bin Laden, we have no interest to quell terrorism at all.

So why are we in Iraq? Oil. Not how you would think. We don't want the oil for ourselves. We want it to stay in the ground.

That way big oil controls the supply and can price it where they would profit the most from it. They've established nothing but record profits since Bush got into office, why change a good thing? After all Bush is an oilman and Cheney had energy task force meetings with these people.. so secretive that he refused subpoenas for the documents in those meetings.

Since we've been in Iraq it's been easy to tell who the war profiteers have been. Here in Milwaukee gas jumped from $3.19 a gallon to $3.49 a gallon overnight. 30 cents, just like that. And on Saturday it went from $2.95 to $3.19. 54 cents in less than a week. They're making out like bandits.

Sadly it leads us to the ultimate conclusion. The war on terror was never about Bin Laden. It was about profit. We invaded the places where we could change oil policy by building big pipelines for one major oil company or keeping the oil in the ground for all of them.

Over 7,000+ Americans have died by official count in 9/11 and Iraq combined. These figures are low because they don't count the Afghanistan numbers, the civilians killed or those who died from sickness or non-mortal wounds later after the initial attack.

And Big Oil is smiling all the way to the bank thanks to Bush.

Oh and here's the kicker, it was announced today that intelligence shows that al-Qaeda is back to pre-9/11 strength.

Heckuva job Bushie.

-Rp

The Four Step Neo-Con Foreign Policy Strategy

With special thanks to Lerkfish at Democratic Underground for coming up with such a perfect analogy.

1. Whack hornet's nest on someone else's property.
2. Take over the neighbor's property for their own protection.
3. Destroy the neighbor's house.
4. Start breeding more hornets.

I couldn't say it better myself.

-Rp

We get it! Right Wingers are totally nuts...

Yet another interesting article came out today by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post delving into the psychological profile of our President and his Administration. Of course his article was basically a review of the thesis made in a new book titled, "Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me!)" by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

They make a good case about the cognitive dissonance suffered by this Administration and try to pick through the rationale that Bushco employs on different subjects.

I can remember some on the right trying to manipulate the media and cherry pick psychological arguments about 'Bill Clinton the Womanizer' or 'Bill Clinton the Pathological Liar' but honestly I cannot recall a President or a group core of people that encapsulates so many mental problems as Bush and his Neo-Con/Right Wing followers. Their completely disturbing alternate reality has really gotten psychologists everywhere jumping at the chance to study their behavior.

I happen to own a pretty terrific book on this topic entitled, "Bush On The Couch", which tries to dissect the thought process and emotional state of the Bushies. I encourage you all to check it out.

While both books look fantastic (I have not read 'Mistakes' yet), there are other studies that have been released that seem to back up the theory that there are serious mental issues with right wingers and they appear to begin in childhood.

I figured with the new article I could throw out some extra links for you here to help jumpstart your own studies and give you more info to draw your own conclusions from on this very topic.

-The Hartford Advocate, Dec. 7, 2006 reported: "Study Finds Link Between Bush Supporters and Mental Illness" (article is no longer on their site, here is a reprint of the article)

-Psychology Today, Dec. 22, 2006 published a study entitled, "The Ideological Animal" that studied the differences in personalities and goes through tendencies of people of the conservative and liberal persuasions, it also discusses a 2003 study and is a huge source of information on why conservatives are the way they are.

-LiveScience, May 24, 2007 put out a short article entitled, "Political Preference is Half Genetic" linking political belief to genetics. They also have a brief link to an older study about happiness that mentions that Republicans are happier than Democrats. Of course they are! For the most part Republicans care mostly about themselves (as we have seen with their hatred of social programs to help the poor and needy versus saving extra tax dollars for themselves or Bush's wars). Ignorance is bliss after all. It also was taken before the American public tossed the Republican congress in the trash in the 2006 midterms so take it for what you will.

Now the following two articles are my own personal links to the type of insanity that I find encapsulating the Right Wing.

First, Bush's Administration and their hatred for Gays is amazing. He tried to push an anti-gay marriage amendment, kicks gays out of the military at a time when our recruitment levels are putrid, and then these two articles come out. One is certainly Bush's fault, the other is not but is symbolic of the people that vote for him, the Christian Right, and their own lunacy. Both are great study cases in the psychological study of why the Right is as crazy as it is.

-Pentagon spends $7.5 million on "Gay Bomb".

I shit you not. Listen to the premise from this article:

Just this month, the government confirmed that an Ohio Air Force laboratory had asked for $7.5 million to build a nonlethal "gay bomb," a weapon that would encourage enemies to make love, not war. The weapon would use strong aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops so sexually attracted to each other that they'd lose interest in fighting.

Yep, Gay people can be created in a chemical lab apparently and once someone "becomes" gay, they will drop arms and not fight because apparently gay people are 'pussies'. What kind of dumbasses are in charge here? Oh wait, stupid question. We know already.

-Catholic Church is against destroying Human-animal hybrid embryos.

That's right, gay sex = evil and wrong. Priests having sex = evil and wrong. But embryos with human and animal egg and sperm combinations, they should be kept alive and fought for by the parents! The church is fucking nuts. The issue revolves around destroying any embryos and my guess is they want to be consistently against destruction of embryos because otherwise stem cell research isn't a bad idea and their whole "it's the same thing as abortion" argument gets exposed for the bullshit it is.

But hey, if the Religious Right wants to condone bestiality babies they should consult Rick Santorum and get their talking points straight. After all he opposed gay marriage on the grounds that it was like, "man on dog sex".

Anyway now that we've established through a multitude of medical experts and studies that the right is completely fucking wacko, can we get to impeaching and throwing these people out of office already? After all, their concept of America is clearly a delusion related to their mental condition and we cant allow their delusions to override our reality and destroy 200+ years of democracy.

-Rp

A Quick Note on Scooter's Commutation

I wonder what our forefathers would think of today's America. I'm pretty sure our Fourth President James Madison (right) and George Mason (left) would have gone nuts if they had heard about a President commuting a buddy to keep himself and his own administration's illegal directives from coming out or being fully investigated. Such an obstruction of justice was looked at in pretty harsh terms then and according to the judges and juries in this case, now.

Here's what they both said when they fought vehemently during the Virginia Constitution Ratification for more stringent Impeachment policies for corrupt Presidencies (also here's a link to a terrific article on the Libby topic that includes these quotes as well)

George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."

James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

What are we to expect from this Administration though? We know their plans and we know that they have zero regard for the law.

Yet impeachment is off the table.

What a sad state America is on the Fourth of July of our 231st year.

Rp

Tipping Your Hand

Every time the Bush Administration and the Right Wingnuts inside it has wanted to do something, they have done it. In fact, they have been willing to flaunt the very concepts of what they have wanted and what they are willing to do to achieve it.

In the mid-90s, most of what comprised the original Administration under Dubya signed onto a group called the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

Under the guise of a likeminded think tank, they sent letters to Bill Clinton urging him to go to war with Iraq.

In fact they even wrote up their own doctrine of what American Foreign Policy should look like. It was a tale of a new empire, one with strategic targets in the Middle East that would help the U.S. exert power and gain expansive controls over in the other side of the Atlantic.

In this document, they even acknowledged how difficult it would be to obtain American support for such enterprising military missions and pointed out that if perhaps a new Pearl Harbor were to occur, then Americans would be swayed to their line of thinking.

You can question or deny the legitimacy of theories claiming Bush either let it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or made it happen on purpose (MIHOP) but one way or another the PNAC members got their ultimate wish and it came in the horrific form of 9/11.

The facts remain that they quite openly discussed needing an event like 9/11 to occur and that fairly detailed Presidential Daily Briefings (see below) got to Condi Rice and Bush himself and were purposely disregarded.


They followed up what had to be the worst attack on American soil ever with a very small number of troops to go after the culprit. All the while setting their targets on their very first PNAC target: Iraq

From 1997 on, the PNAC had been writing op-ed pieces, letters to important policy makers, they were even so blunt as to publish articles in the Weekly Standard discussing how to attack Iraq. They had their 9/11 and within days (if not minutes) they were going after the target they really wanted. Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan was a side trinket to the American people to buy Bush's tough guy persona and support a new meme.... the "global war on terror".

Now this is old news to people that aren't tuned into the brainwashing the corporate media feeds you every day, but it certainly makes these next few articles all the more startling to those with an observant eye.

First (and this too may be old news to some) to put this whole thing in perspective we must point this out. Bush has been sending our entire National Guard to Iraq leaving us virtually helpless at home. All the while the Administration has been building it's own Army in Iraq. The reports I've seen puts the "Blackwater" mercenaries at least 48,000 troops strong and they do not follow the chain of command the regular US Forces do. In fact the only command they follow is whereever the almighty dollar leads them. They are Bush's personal soldiers, bought and paid for by your tax dollars and controlled by him and his cronies. They are not accountable oncesoever to the American people.

What difference does that make? Well he might very well need them to enforce his next big coup which he so boldly sent along on May 9th. He issued National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 which basically say that should a catastrophic event occur, he can take control of the entire government to, and I shit you not, "ensure Constitutional government".

He who so strongly believes in the Constitution that he subverts law at every opportunity to test it's boundaries. He who was rumored to have said that the Constitution is, "just a goddamned piece of paper".

Yep that's the guy I want having control and exerting "Constitutional" authority in the time of a catastrophic emergency. Although he leaves that terminology, "catastrophic emergency" open for events that happen rather frequently.

According to the Progressive:

It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”

Well that could be a tornado or a hurricane which happen frequently every year and all of a sudden Bush has the right to basically declare martial law.

If I could play the odds in Vegas, I would think based on their previous track record of hinting at what they plan to do, that this catastrophic event occurs before the Democrats face the polls in 2008. This bunch has proved ignorant to the will of the people and willing to do whatever it takes (steal elections, smear friend and foe, break every law in the book) to obtain more power than any Administration before it and they will not back down and give that power up for anyone.

So the question becomes, should the next "terrorist attack" that the Bush Administration purposely refused to defend us against (see: refusal of funding to secure ports and nuclear power plants, cutting funding to first responders, sending national guardsman overseas) or the next hurricane Bush refused to prepare FEMA for occurs, and Bush takes over with his own personal army to command...

When do you take your country back?

Or is the nobility of freedom and liberty not worth the effort any more?

You decide.

-Rp

The Desperate Ramblings of The Right

Just when you thought you heard it all the Right Wingers came out swinging and ended up sounding completely nuts.

Let's start with the craziest idiot of them all, Dick Cheney.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich had planned on introducing his Articles of Impeachment in a press conference today that he plans to present in the House of Representatives. In an effort to avoid the obvious embarrassment that such a press conference would cause, Cheney's staff issued a release that Cheney was ill and going to the hospital once more. Only Cheney wasn't ill and he feigned the situation to garner sympathy. It worked too as Kucinich pulled his press conference. Then just as he does so, Cheney shows up at a press conference himself and blasts Harry Reid. To which Reid responded hilariously, "I'm not going to get into a name calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

Luckily Kucinich went back and decided to do that press conference today. Although chances of impeachment without actual charges are slim, it raises the profile of such charges and might open the door a bit wider down the road.

Bush himself came out with a rather crazy comment (like that's a shocker). Apparently according to Bush, the 2006 Mid-Term elections in which Democrats swept into power amidst the anger of Americans about the Iraq War, really was an election telling Bush to commit to the surge and THAT was the change of direction we the voters wanted. The elections were a mandate for the surge.

I shit you not:

Last November the American people said they were frustrated and wanted change in our strategy in Iraq. I listened. Today General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course. But the American people did not vote for failure, and that is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee.

Oh it gets crazier...

Republicans are now saying if Democrats go after the Bush Administration's Emails, then they will go after Clinton's emails.

This is hilarious for THREE reasons.

1. They are the minority party and don't have subpoena power to get ANYTHING. They couldn't even subpoena a television listing from TV guide if they wanted to. Welcome to the minority pals, you have ZERO power!

2. Independent Counsel already did this! Remember Ken Starr's old office? They tried everything, gathered every inch of info and NEVER found an impropriety in the Whitewater deals, which was the entire witchhunt that the GOP went on to get Clinton in the first place. Sorry, nothing to see here idiots.

3. What is it with these fucking guys? Bush has been in office for 6 years and it's still "Clinton's fault" with every single thing their leadership does. Regardless of HOW wrong their guys are they are always willing to try to turn it onto Clinton somehow. 50 years from now if they somehow manage to con Americans into electing another GOP President it STILL will be Clinton's fault when that guy inevitably fucks up.

But hey Clinton's not the only Democrat that should be held in the lowest possible regard. According to former GOP Rep. Tom Delay, Democrats are committing treason or at least very close to it for saying this war is lost. Ironically Delay did the exact same thing when it came to Clinton's Kosovo campaign. Is there a reason that guy is not in prison yet? Most certainly the Texas D.A. who is building the case against him has enough corruption proof to nail him by now.

Got to love the nutcases on the Right. They're going to sound even crazier in two years when they are pushed out of office for generations to come.

-Rp