Here's Why

Remember when Chimpy promised the people that if anyone in his administration had been involved in blowing the cover of Valerie Plame they would no longer work in the (our) White House? Yet now that the evidence is out clearly marking Libby and Rove as the actors-in-chief, Libby's boss is praising him for his service to the country and Rove is still in place.

I postulate a simple reason for this. Both Cheney and Chimpy knew and approved.

Gotta love simplicity. Cuts right through the spin, doesn't it?

Out of Control!

The winds of Katrina did something no one had been much able to do since 9-11, except, to a lesser degree and a shorter time, Cindy Sheehan. See, Bushco CEO Rove understands full well how important it is to control the message. Not only has he made sure that Bushco's name appears in the "news" every single day, he has crafted the content of the accompanying message and insured that it has been dutifully disseminated by every possible medium.

Cindy Sheehan, by promising to camp out in a Texas ditch until she received an answer from Bushco, managed to wrest control of the media -- unwittingly, I'd bet -- for a brief time in the lazy dog days of August. I mean, what she did was so fresh, so preposterous, that the media just had to take notice. After all, many of the usual voices were on vacation.

And then came Katrina in September. The winds of this massive storm not only ripped the roofs and siding off hundreds of thousands of buildings. It ripped the remote control right out of CEO Rove's fingers and sent it flying far out of his reach. For days the message was not carefully crafted. For agonizingly long days the message was raw and truthful and real and in living color, too.

It was beautiful and horrifying at once.

The Era of Making Distinctions

The flavor of the current societal bias is overwhelmingly political. How exactly did this happen? We still point out when someone is black or maybe when someone is Hispanic or possibly when someone is poor. But the labels liberal (as in bad) and conservative (as in good) when describing individuals whose occupations or life work should be apolitical is now pervasive. Entertainers. Scientists. Judges. Journalists. Teachers. Diplomats. Preachers. We know, somehow, that the executive branch of the government wants to know one thing first -- which side are you on.

Bushco ran on a platform that included frequent chants about his being a Uniter, not a Divider. Yet even in the McCarthy era we were together in the same camp except for the Communists. Now, we are either 'with' or 'against' the administration. Everyone is drawing these lines, it is how we define ourselves in 2005. It isn't healthy.

Can't we all just get along?

Now Let Us Celebrate the Idiots

In these trying times the dunce rules. And 'dunceness' is celebrated, elevated, and memorialized in our major media. Witness "Blue Collar TV" or many of the current and recent films. I mean to cast no aspersion on Forrest Gump, for the message there was plainly that simplicity may well cover a beauty and depth of heart and compassion that is plainly lost on those more sophisticated. However, with the advent of the Chimp in Charge, the C- student, the man who failed at every venture he ever got involved with, the redneck with the down-home twang and the folksy mannerisms.... suddenly being dumb and out of touch and unable to string a sentence together with real words is something we all misunderestimated the power of ... apparently.

Blah.

Science and scientists are currently marginalized and their scientific studies are discounted. Medical men, environmentalists, engineers .. their recommendations are spurned. Education has been dumbed down to the ability to answer questions on standardized tests -- no wonder teachers find little reward in their time-honored profession. Evolution is slowly being replaced by schmevolution (thank you Jon Stewart).

Ever since the Emperor got wind that he may not be wearing any clothes, the propaganda has been set into high gear to make idiocy 'cool' and most acceptable.

I don't know about you, and I'm certainly no genius, but one thing I learned as I grew up was, "be around those you want to be like." And I extrapolate that to mean, elevate those who represent the best .. in brains, ethics, sincerity. Down with the intentionally mediocre, the banal, the corrupt.

Down with Bushco and the media blitz designed to make stupid admirable.

"The Aftermath Will Be a Cakewalk"

Remember the rosy predictions about the state of Iraq after our unwarranted, immoral, and by international standards illegal invasion? We were supposed to conjure images of thankful Iraqi children strewing flower petals at the feet of our brave soldiers as they marched their victory march through the streets of Baghdad. We were led to believe the people would pay us obeisance for relieving them from the misery of a brutal dictator who cut off ears and fingers on a whim, for whom mass murder was just another day at the office, someone who reveled in the thought of spraying poison gas on thousands at a time.

I now find it hard to see where the fabrications end. We had to have worked hard ("It's hard wurk!") to paint Saddam Hussein as Satan, Osama, Hitler all rolled into one. Given that the tales we were told by our "We will restore honor and dignity to the White House" administration about WMDs in Iraq and about the post-invasion scenario turned out to be total falsehoods, I have to sprinkle at least a few grains of salt on the stories about how disgusting and awful Saddam and his sons were.

But that's not what was on my mind for the blog today. Ever since it became clear that what we were told about the Iraqi people's welcome was way, way off base, some anonymous administration official lets slip, from time to time, a short-term prediction. That prediction always is, "because of [insert latest move toward 'democracy' here], the [terrorists | insurgents | foreign fighters | Zarqawi | Al Qaeda in Iraq | etc, etc] will try to make things worse so expect more bombings and disruption and terrorist activities."

I am getting very tired of this pathetic singsong excuse, how about you? If every deadline for "democracy" we set causes hundreds or thousands to die, why do we keep doing it? Bushco seeks to validate its slow but unending assimilation of Iraqi Oil and other assets by asserting that "terrorists hate freedom" and you can see that to be true by how much resistance they put up whenever Bushco inches forward with its plans. Such resistance can only be dealt with by applying even more force, and to hell with the damage that results.

What of the "law of opposites" or Karma or the Golden Rule? I do know better and it very much looks, to me, like Bushco wants the conflict in Iraq to continue. It's good for business, which is the only "nashunal intereshtsss" that Bushco recognizes.

"We have to make sure this never happens again,"

...they always say. How many times will we let our government mouth this pathetic platitude? Now, after how much warning about the potential devastation a large hurricane could cause... now after ignoring science and technology and common sense! Now that the worst has happened, we have to figure out what went wrong? So it can be fixed and never happen again? How many iterations of failure will we put up with? Intelligence failures, planning failures, rogue corporals following orders from hired mercenaries in Abu Ghraib failures, political spite blowing secret agent's cover failures, leadership failures -- the litany of abominable failures since January 2001 are several too many.

So how will we make sure any of these will never happen again? So many words out of so many mouths that may as well be assholes instead, talking crap, spewing crap. But there's no real intention there to change. Real change. Transformative change. I don't see it even though you can find out what needs changing and how to go about it. It's there. There just is no real leader to take hold and speak the truth.

I fear we are lost, we the people have lost, short of a real revolution.

Remember September 11, "The Day That Changed Everything..."

but what about August 28 and 29 and 30 and ...

If the slaughter of 3000 or so citizens of this great United States could change everything, then what about this slaughter of 10,000 citizens? Where is the catch phrase that will permit us to focus on the systemic problems that birthed the death of an entire American city?

I remember thinking .. "Huh?" when every official and the parroting media started saying, "This changes everything," or "Nothing will be the same, now." I thought, well, hey, something pretty incredible just happened alright, but why should that change who we hold ourselves to be? Honest, moral, just, forgiving, welcoming, free, symbols of all that can be good in our world... But oh how everything did change.

We turned into obsessive vengeful ghouls, casting aside decency and morality and patience and yes, even basic intelligence. We slavered and growled, we taunted and mocked, we used our treasure to spoil a hundred years of developed world manners and invaded a sovereign nation based on LIES. Lies freely spouted but carefully concocted, rehearsed and propped up, lies painstakingly designed to incite us to slaver even more with the urge for revenge.

The poor dear peoples of Iraq, already burdened by the dictator we had imposed upon them, became 'rag-heads' and scum, the focus of our collective scorn and hatred. Stop! we yelled, but of course we yelled it in English and they were confused so we slaughtered them too.

So what shall be the new battle cry in this immense disaster? Pray to GOD! No one is to blame! Bah. I pray that the incompetence and negligence and willful ignorance that Katrina has exposed will truly change everything. It is long past time that we work toward equalizing the have nots and the haves. It is way past time for this administration's egregious policies to be laid bare for all to see the outcomes. This is what happens when the rich bitches get away with murder. Murder happens.

I do pray for you, New Orleans, and for all the people who have been displaced, drowned, corralled, transplanted, separated, and suffocated with empty promises. Lord have mercy.

The President Who Lost a Whole American City

...may well be Bush's epitaph and the legacy that albatrosses his neck in the picture painted for posterity by the history books.

Purposeful degradation of the federal government's ability to respond has resulted in the deaths of untold thousands of our own citizens but also the shameful loss of untold billions of dollars in commerce. The latter is why even Bush's normal flunkies are spitting mad at the string of decisions that led to the loss of an entire American city.

Katrina was one thing. People can rebuild their homes and businesses, it would have been hard. But the drowning of New Orleans and its environs is a different story. The city has been declared dead. Residents have been replaced by gun-toting militia of all stripes.

"No, former residents, you must leave to make way for Halliburton who will take care of the rebuilding. Sorry about your jobs and lives, go settle down elsewhere. New Orleans will be better than before, mostly because you won't be a part of it."

Can We Survive '05?

Today a few members of our Congress (far too few) made a courageous gesture by raising an objection to the state of Ohio's certified tally of votes for President. Where was Robert Byrd? Teddy Kennedy? I saw Hillary's and Barak's name in some alternative news item, but they were not mentioned by the PBS news.

They will be marginalized, of course, and their objections brushed under the rug that now bulges obscenely with the ashes from the other burning issues that the administration (and to be fair, many fellow 'Mericans) simply don't want to look at:

• The Missing WMDs (or Failure to Make the Case for Creaming Iraq)


• The Burgeoning Fiscal Problem (or Screw the Elderly, the Poor, and Dismantle the Middle Class)


• The "There Is No Global Warming" Blindspot


• The Case for Torture (or Let's Make Torture Be in the Eye of the Beholder, Not the Victim)

There are more, of course.

Gosh, how unproud of America I am today. Worse than Ukraine when it comes to elections. Worse than most of the rest of the world now in so many things. Ethics in government is a meaningless concept.

And actually, what I wanted to write about today was a very brief encounter I had when I was making my way to work this morning. I stopped at the local Sheetz to pick up some coffee and a bagel. I drive a 10-yr old Acura that sports a couple of bumper stickers, to wit: Kerry/Edwards 2004 (pasted on top of my Gore 2000 one) and WVPEACE.ORG. I make the assumption that the encounter has to do with these obvious signs of my objections to the current administration policies.

After I finished in the store and was getting back in my car a Toyota 4x pickup with toolboxes and bedcover pulled up in the slot alongside me. It was occupied by two young men with Marine-like buzzcuts. Before I closed the car door I heard the driver fairly shout toward me, "The hell with ragheads, burn them all!"

As I pulled out, his words rung in my head while I figured out what he'd said and probably why.

I see too much hostility in some faces. What happened to religion? Wasn't Jesus called the Prince of Peace? Didn't he come to show us the way to humility and generosity and forgiveness? But it is the Old Testament God that has reared His head these days, the God of Vengeance. Except people forget .. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord. We are all vengeful mini-gods now I guess, with our guns and our attitudes.

Damn GW Bush. Damn him to hell for setting the example that you can do what you want without repercussion as long as you are on his side.

I pray there is a hell.