Don't say the "B" word

Two Held for Alleged New York Subway Bomb Plot

This is sort of like saying "bomb" on a plane. Or saying "bum" with an accent. They didn't actually HAVE a bomb. Nor did they have concrete plans to get or plant one. Muslims today, everyone else tomorrow. (I wonder if the FBI is spying on me RIGHT NOW.)

Elsewhere in the news, the crackdown on bike-riding terrorists has officially begun.

message from God

Locusts Invade 'Passion of Christ' Town

Bush Campaign Lawyer Tied to Group's Anti-Kerry Ads

Gotcha!

The Purpose of Fox News

Here's my theory. Stay with me on this.

Fox News, radical rightwing critics, and other noisy voices from the extreme right, have an agenda underneath their spoken war of words: to create and enforce and imaginary split in America.

Much has started to be written about the "Two Americas" - every single issue that reaches the news is now interpreted in two, exactly two ways. There's the Democratic viewpoint and the Republican viewpoint. The "left" and the "right". Once commentators get ahold of it, we're all told what our arguments are to be and, because we simply have too much information coming at us to process it all, we spit those same talking points at each other.

This is an illusion.

America is NOT split down the middle and there are NOT exactly two ways to see every issue. As many perspectives exist in this country, in this world, as exist people.

But here's the tricky part. In framing every argument as "us vs. them", those who control the political process are tricking us into putting ourselves into one of two buckets - the extreme right and the MODERATE right.

The logic goes like this. Bush says "We need to invade / liberate Iraq!" (Or rather, he moves his lips for whoever is actually speaking.) So there's the official "neocon" line of thought. All conservatives, including Murdoch's media empire, fall in behind it.

Kerry says "we must be SMARTER about fighting in Iraq." Since we have only two sides to every argument, all democrats and everyone else who doesn't like Bush and company fall in line behind Kerry.

The problem: we shouldn't fucking BE in Iraq!!! We never should've invaded them. We never should've invade Afghanistan. (As a matter of fact, we never should've starved Iraq with a decade of sanctions, Clinton.)

By forcing the debate into only two directions, the party leaders force a win-win for their corporate donors. And American consumers, mindless sheep that we are, go along with it because at this point, we only see two colors. We only see two options.

What kills me is that this entire debate, in fact EVERY debate, has moved to the right of the ideological spectrum. When the people we detest (O'Reilly, Cheney, Bush, Hannity, Ashcroft, etc, etc, etc) rail against a particular issue, we are tricked into supporting that issue. What those smug bastards never let on is that they're usually only slightly to the left of their own opinions, which still leaves them far too conservatives for how I truly believe most Americans really feel. Similarly, if I say "I support Hillary Clinton and I love purple donuts" then conservatives are suddenly going to hate purple donuts, because they sure as hell hate Hillary. That's how habitualized we've become.

I promise you this: if Bush stood up tomorrow and said "I don't like orange. I think orange looks French. I just think the color orange is un-American. This country is founded on red, white, and blue. And that's what God wants for us." I promise you if he made a speech like that, you would have millions of conservatives all over the nation falling over themselves to build bonfires, hold anti-orange rallies, destroy every scrap of orange they could find. They'd boycott oranges altogether and anything they thought LOOKED orange. Then you'd have millions of Bush-haters with jerking knees who would take up banners of orange, go on orange-only diets, wear orange head-to-toe.

The rest of us would be scratching our heads in utter bewilderment, wondering how the hell we got to this point. Oh yeah - we're already doing that. I've been scratching my head over this whole Vietnam debate for weeks now. (WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT KERRY'S FUCKING MEDALS!!)

This is called manipulation. And right now, we are being shamelessly manipulated into supporting pro-corporate, anti-compassionate policies regardless of which candidate or party we associate ourselves with.

It's so sad to see true progressives being forced to support Kerry because that's the only chance we have to get bush the hell outta there. This is the result of our deplorable winner-take-all system of elections. If we were to establish a more sensible electoral system, I believe we would crack open this two-sided fallacy and introduce some much-needed sophistication to the debate. In fact, we might discover we have opinions of our own.

I, for one, don't really care for orange. But I have to admit, if Bush hated it, I'd probably like it a lot more. Guilty.

AdGate

Requirement of a scandal: put "gate" at the end of whatever subject you're talking about. In this case, it's this ridiculous back-and-forth about the attack ads. Not sure who in particular is more scandalized. The whole damn thing stinks to me. (The latest.)

I have a theory about this. Perhaps this whole thing is being done deliberately to nauseate the voting public and turn them completely off the electoral process. Whenever the general public is polled, Kerry generally gets majority. Only when REGISTERED VOTERS are polled does it split down the middle. So it's to republican's advantage to keeping voting at a minimum. Ergo, the Let's Disgust America strategy.

Of course, personally I believe that Kerry is actually a republican who thought he'd get more mileage posing as a democrat. So at this point, conservatives win no matter what. It's just a question whether the corporate agenda will be shoved in our face and adorned with redwhiteblue streamers, trumpets blaring, or whether it'll be done behind the scenes under withering attacks from rightwing demagogues and Fox News.

Ellen is God!

I love this!

Whoever came up with this casting is just brilliant. That's all I have to say.

Halliburton's Hubris

$8.8 billion in missing funds.

These guys just amaze me. Some excerpts:

At least $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, according to a draft U.S. audit set for release soon...

One of the main benefactors of the Iraq funds was Texas-based firm Halliburton, which was paid more than a billion dollars out of those funds to bring in fuel for Iraqi civilians.

The monitoring board said despite repeated requests it had not been given access to U.S. audits of contracts held by Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, and other firms that used the development funds.

finally saw Outfoxed

Saw Outfoxed last night at the Roxie and listened to a couple of guest speakers afterwards. Alone at dinner later, finding myself without my usual pad and pen, I seized upon my napkin, took a pen from a donation basket of used pens that are being shipped to children in Africa (no, I did not make that up), and poured out the thoughts bubbling in the back of my brain. Here's what occurred to me:

We are too numb / lethargic / overwhelmed, incapable of action. What is it we can do individually against a rigid power structure which has evolved over decades, even centuries. I remember someone once saying we need a revolution every 30 years. But the 60s was not a revolution. The anti-war protests, as they were recently, were completely ineffectual, except in framing the war historically. But it changed nothing. It prevented nothing. Even now vets are considered heroes and the validity of the war itself, though widely condemned, is rarely brought into question. And it stopped nothing. What can we do now?

#1: UNDERSTAND the system. Understand the flow of money and influence. Understand how the various portions of our society work together.

#2: Understand our own individual channels of influence. What we as citizens are and are not capable of.

#3: Become centered within ourselves. Free our spirits from the encrusted shells we have grown onto like the nautilus, mired under chambers of its own creation.

OBSTACLES - what causes the lethargy?

1. Comfort. We're stil basically comfortable. We've learned to ACCEPT our situation. As long as we're making enough money to get by, very few of us are willing to sacrifice and make significant changes.

2. Exhaustion. By the time we're through doing the do, we have no more energy left to make changes, especially those that could result in an even greater expenditure of energy. We're tired. At the end of the day, we simply want to escape, not march, not think, not work MORE. We must lighten the workload, free ourselves and our time so we have the ENERGY. Incorporate a private practice of growth - ANYTHING. Turn away from the distractions, sports, games, tv, drama, movies, music. Or at least incorporate them in moderation and in such a way that CONTRIBUTES to our growth.

3. Too many ideas, not enough vision. We end up with dozens of people excited, with ideas how to change things. But not enough support. Too many conflicting agendas and leadership but not enough common purpose. Poor organization. Ideas with no focus, no discipline, no expertise. Several organizations have grown to lead the charge - moveon.org being a perfect example. But too many different agendas, some coordination, but not enough. No big impact. No success on the big initiatives.

If after this election we still elect Bush, that will prove that nothing the citizenry can do will be effective over mob psychology and the mass manipulation of the current power structures. I've never seen or imagined the current level of political consciousness. And from what I hear from elders and those who should know, what we're experiencing now is a movement as intense and anything in recent history. So will it be enough? If not, what then?

How can we re-evaulate the American system as a whole and make fundamental changes that are equitable for ALL???

the wisdom of Jerome Corsi

"John Kerry, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, CBS, NBC are all communists. Hillary Clinton is a lesbian fat hog with fake hair. Al and Tipper Gore are terrorists who are part of the Taliban. The pope is senile. And pedophilia is fine with him as long as it's not reported in the liberal press. If you think all this sounds nutty, well, it is. According to the organization Media Matters For America, all this has been written by Jerome Corsi. Why do we care what Jerome Corsi says? Well, we don't. But as co-author of the book "Unfit for Command" about John Kerry and his service in Vietnam, some people are making the mistake of taking him seriously. In the world of putrid right-wing pond scum, Corsi is one of the biggest bottom-feeders of them all." --James Carville, CNN Crossfire

Talking Points

Jon Stewart is a god.

Did anyone notice...

...that we don't pick our leaders? Not even close. An excerpt:

After two days of interviews of more than a dozen prospective candidates and hours of debate, the Republican party's 19-member central committee settled on the 53-year-old Keyes over Andrea Barthwell, the former deputy director of the White House drug czar's office. (emphasis mine)

It's become such a given, such a basic part of the process, that no one seems to question the complete annihilation of democracy when not the constituents, not the voters, but the party's COMMITTEE picks the candidates. And not just the GOP - both parties work this way.

The boys (yes, boys) that head the national parties get to pick and choose our leaders. All we do is decide if we want a republican or democrat. And that's already decided for the most part, except for those mythical "swing voters" who pretend to be independent.

The legacy of Clinton

Incidentally, I love how conservatives keep using Clinton's behavior as an excuse for Bush's. If you say Bush didn't have enough evidence to support a war against Iraq, they'll trot out Clinton quotes talking about danger and WMDs, etc. It's like if Clinton endorsed it, it must be ok. If Clinton did all these things, that makes it ok for Bush to do them. Hey, Clinton lied about a blow job, ergo Bush can now lie about anything he wants - it's all OK!!

They must really respect the man to want to emulate his behavior so badly. However I, for one, didn't support a lot of the things Clinton did and I sure as hell don't support them now that Bush is doing far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far worse.

They knew

Wow - smoking gun. We all knew he was ballsy but it turns out dubya didn't just "rely on bad intelligence" (his own, in other words), he actually had senior advisors telling him NOT to blow things out of proportion, NOT to use WMDs as an excuse to go to war. Great article. Read it.

No really! There's really a wolf this time!

Credibility Cloud Hangs Over U.S. Terror Warnings

I've no doubt something will happen someday, though hopefully not anytime soon. But we've already grown beyond numb at this ridiculous terror alert routine. Why is this even a public announcement? What can mere mortals do other than get scared and look at everyone suspiciously? Terror alerts, if they're going to be used, should be part of an INTERNAL communications process throughout national law enforcement agencies. In other words, tell the people who can do something about it. This kind of fearmongering helps NO ONE (except the actual terrorists).

Halliburton Settles SEC Charge from Cheney Years

Why wasn't Cheney charged???

It still amazes me that the attack dawgs spent millions and millions to try and nail the Clintons on Whitewater, which even Ken Starr was unable to do anything with. Meanwhile, Dems are sitting on so much material on the current administration that you could spit at random and find an impeachable offense. Are they taking the high road or are they just that timid? (Or perhaps that outgunned by the republican coup.)

Intelligence Director

I heard on NPR that bush (note the little "b") has suddenly taken an interest to the 9/11 panel's recommendations. But he doesn't want to create a cabinet-level position. Meanwhile, Kerry wants to create a cabinet post and, it was also mentioned, implement a high degree of executive control over the department. Color me suspicious but the fact that both candidates are "skull and bones" members, it worries me when we talk about executive control for ANYTHING.

That said, I would strongly support a cabinet-level position. Have the director (or secretary) be accountable at the highest level. Furthermore, make it a position that MUST be approved by the Senate! By making this a cabinet post, we can at least try to ensure some sort of approval process, to (hopefully) prevent dubya from annointing...I mean appointing...another divine Ashcroft to the glowing eye of scrutiny over our most private lives.

Ron Reagan speaks

Great editorial by Ron Reagan, the younger.

Excerpt:

The far-right wing of the country - nearly one third of us by some estimates - continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a "hater," and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.