020060131 23:07 • 
I have a single comment on the content of George Bush’s nonsensical State Of The Union address tonight. Amidst the lies and sound bite-ready propaganda, every good point in the plan for America he presented, such as increased education, energy independence, health care for the average American, increased safety for the nation… every single one of these and all the rest are opposed by the massive network of corporate business interests the Republican party is owned by.
But all that was designed to roll down the media pipe like oil to your car. The real issue tonight, and one which should ring warning bells in every head, was the arrest and removal from the House Gallery of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan prior to the commencement of Bush’s address.
Sheehan was an invited guest, present legitimately. She never uttered a sound, never caused a physical disturbance. The cause for arrest? She exercised her Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.
Sheehan wore a t-shirt, which said: “2,245 Dead — How Many More??”
If you’re an American, you may feel the wearing of a t-shirt bearing a political statement to a President’s State Of The Union speech is inappropriate. I have some points I’d like you to take a look at.
1) Sheehan is an American citizen, just like you and I. We are all guaranteed the right to free speech by our Constitution. Not just in designated areas, not some of the time and shut-the-hell-up when it’s bothersome to those in charge… it is our right every day of our lives.
2) Freedom of speech as a fundamental right is what makes us, literally, a free people. Without the right to express our views, the potential for joint action against those who might arise in our society to oppress us is severely limited. Freedom of speech, freedom to publicly criticize and call to others to take up your cause, freedom for the least of us to take the largest to task… these are freedoms people don’t have under the governments in China, Iran, North Korea.
3) George Bush is a public servant. As an elected official, he represents you, me, Cindy Sheehan and every other American. He is accountable to every American, including Cindy Sheehan. Let me say it again: George Bush is a public servant, not a King. He’s paid with our tax dollars. The entire State Of The Union address is paid for by us.
Since when are we paying for censorship?
What I want to know is not how many more American soldiers will die in Iraq.
What I want to know is: how many more signs do we need before we realize our government is no longer ours?
020050904 22:47 •
Feeling the call of revolution put me in mind to re-read a classic on the subject: Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. One passage has struck me as being particularly cogent, given our present circumstances:
“Followed a long time during which would have been possible to forget anything as unlikely as revolution had not details taken so much time. Our first purpose was not to be noticed. Long distance purpose was to make things as much worse as possible.
Yes, worse. Never was a time, even at last, when all Loonies wanted to throw off Authority, wanted it bad enough to revolt. All Loonies despised Warden and cheated Authority. Didn’t mean they were ready to fight and die. ...We were as non-political a people as history ever produced. I know, I was as numb to politics as any until circumstances pitched me into it.”
Yesterday I prophesied this: “If you have enough money to be one of the people Bush calls “his base,” you’ll get the inevitable reconstruction contracts and tax breaks once those poor blacks are all out of the way in Louisiana.”
Today I read this on forbes.com: Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Katrina Deal.
BushCo couldn’t respond in time to save thousands of lives, yet they planned in advance to give the millions of dollars in “natural disaster” reconstruction contracts to themselves. How convenient then, that Bush cut or denied annual funding to fix the levees in New Orleans repeatedly, with each year worse for hurricanes than the prior.
Circumstances, my friends, have pitched us into it.
020050903 21:27 •
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” - Emma Lazarus
These words from Lazarus’ sonnet “The New Colossus” are inscribed within the Statue of Liberty. They have been used to represent a vision of America which I grew up with, and grew in scope to encompass The American Dream as an extension of a fictionalized but inspiring history: here, in America, the melting pot of the world, we are all equal and we are all free.
How did we get from that vision to the present sorry state of the nation? We’ve moved from “Liberty and Justice for All” to “Money Talks.” Simply watching Fox News, that bastion of right-wing media integrity, I was aware New Orleans would be a disaster two days before Katrina hit. We all knew, including the director of FEMA, your representatives and the many corporate influences which combine in the person of George W. Bush.
Why wasn’t every single bus, truck, helicopter and plane mobilized from surrounding areas to evacuate the danger zones? Why are the people still suffering and dying in New Orleans predominantly dark of skin and poor?
Because money talks.
If you have money, you can leave easily. If you have enough money to be one of the people Bush calls “his base,” you’ll get the inevitable reconstruction contracts and tax breaks once those poor blacks are all out of the way in Louisiana. It costs less to let people die than it does to move, house and care for them, and the Conservative and Christian Right which currently dominate the political landscape have never shown much mercy to those they scapegoat as responsible for the decline of our nation.
It’s easy to forget just how recently women became eligible to vote, how recently slaves were freed and blacks became full citizens, how recently we jailed our own people for being Japanese, how recently we realized the Industrial Revolution brought with it environmental and health consequences, and just how recently science and technology transformed our world into one of human proportions instead of ignorant make-believe guided by a divine hand.
Some people are still smarting after being on the wrong side of those battles. Some of them, in the form of our current administration, are determined to change the tide of the war.
Yes… war.
We have a government which has proven, many times over, that only the wealthy matter and all others are second-class citizens.
Your government doesn’t care about you.
Chief Justice Rehnquist died today. This same uncaring government is now poised to change the laws of our land through two or more appointments to the Supreme Court. These changes will benefit only the rich and corporate, and the ideologies of those who keep them in power.
Since Bush’s election, I’ve heard endlessly about the death of the Left. The Republican talking heads have repeated the funeral message and demonized every group associated with Leftist principles and values.
Don’t believe it.
If you’re not one of Bush’s millionaires, you’re a member of the Left. If you’re a union member, an honest educator, a policeman, a firefighter, a car mechanic, a waitperson, an artist, a student, you’re a member of the Left. If you voted against your interests and now find Bush’s “ownership society” means you won’t own anything, you’re a member of the Left. If you’re one of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, you are a member of the Left.
Now is the time for all decent human beings to rise from the dead, stand up and fight like hell. This can be a bloodless battle if you register to vote and send these despicable people and their corporate backers packing in 2006 and 2008.
Elsewise, the future is more like post-Katrina New Orleans than The American Dream.
020050802 15:19 •
Some parts of America still think for themselves, although I’m not sure we’re still “American.” When someone steals a nation they redefine a nationality. The San Francisco indie City Lights Booksellers & Publishers at Columbus and Broadway is getting the message out:
“Gentlemen, what are the four evils?”
“Religion, fascism, tyranny, ignorance.”
Yesterday Mr. Bush endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design in American schools. Last month he inked a deal to provide India with nuclear technology, in direct violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It strikes me as generally unwise to place the power to destroy entire cities in the hands of someone who holds a literal interpretation of religious myth as equal to scientific knowledge.
City Lights has succinctly defined the Bush doctrine across a wide range of policy. If you oppose Bush’s mission, you oppose his “America.”
And if you oppose “America,” you’re one heartbeat away from “anti-American.”
020050721 10:10 •
In Oceania I wrote of the current police presence escorting commuter ferries in the San Francisco Bay: Coast Guard and SFPD Zodiacs, armed to the teeth. My hypothesis painted this show of force as pure play-acting for a populace in fear.
I admit a moment of delusion and hubris in the original post. The common conception most ferry commuters have of the armed escort is one of security and benevolence, that it serves to protect them as they cower in the face of “terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.” The powers-who-lie encourage this self-centered viewpoint, promoting the fantasy each individual American warrants military guard, but it’s not accurate. In communism you live and die for the state. Here in big capitalism you live and die for the economy. How are these positions different from one another?
I learned the truth of our escorts from a friend involved in international maritime trade and port security. Apparently there is credible intelligence of possible attacks on tankers and the Bay’s northern shoreline refineries, using the ferries for explosive delivery.
The boats with big guns aren’t here to protect us. They’re here to take us out before we get to the oil.
020050714 18:05 •
I travel by ferry to the San Francisco financial district. After the recent London bombings, commuter boats on the Bay are now escorted by small police or coast guard vessels, Zodiacs sporting gigantic guns. You must walk through police presence at either end, sometimes with a cruiser prominently parked on the pedestrian walkway or the dock. Men in uniforms keeping the people safe and secure.
What, exactly, are these keepers of safety going to do in a crisis? A sleeper terrorist would have been riding this ferry for years, waiting for activation. They would walk on with a bomb in a briefcase while smiling hello to the crew. These men with big guns will simply be blown up along with the rest of us.
It’s the illusion of safety for a populace in fear.
Here’s a short list for you: searches without warrant, photography in public places prohibited, illegal public protests, rigged and rehearsed “town hall” political events, opposition groups branded traitors and terrorist sympathizers, limitless detainment and torture of “non-enemy combatants”, scrubbed media unable to display coffins of returning dead, rising nationalism inflamed by the government itself, a political rhetoric devoid of actual meaning except the creation of fear and “moral” distraction while money flies from already empty public coffers into the accounts of businesses affiliated with the leaders.
China? USSR? Wake up, America.
This is not the path to safety or freedom. We’re being used.
020050620 23:39 •
We watched the 2000 election turn into a New Fascist coup.
We watched religious conservatives march, step by step, for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy here in the United States.
We watched as one justified war turned into a Crusade by the unholy alliance of Christianity and multinational corporations like Halliburton.
We watch still, as Mr. Bush and his corporate masters attempt to permanently restrict civil liberties and privacy, completely destroy what’s left of our public educational system, rape our environment, divert our economic security into corporate accounts and write bigotry itself into the United States Constitution.
BushCo mocks the world and every intelligent human being standing on it. They’ve turned Americans from rock stars into the most hated nationality on the planet.
Not content with making half a trillion dollars on the blood of American and Iraqi innocents in a corporate sponsored war we now know was planned and faked from before it started, their sights are set on the entire globe. From his Balloon of Hot Air, Mr. Bush shouts his craftily ignorant, everyman slogans in cognitively disjunct
newspeak.
And we watch.
But judging from various recent events, the backlash is here:
- recent pitiful poll numbers
- the inability of Bush and his corporate lapdogs in the Senate to move their agenda forward even with superior body count
- the fact Bush is whipping up his Christian base once more with the tried and true bogeyman of gay marriage
- Bush is publicly flip-flopping to once again link 9/11 with Iraq as a justification for the war
I’d say the Balloon of Hot Air has developed a rather large hole. Now is the time for action.
Write your representatives. Tell them you don’t support Bolton for American Ambassador to the United Nations and you won’t vote for anyone who does. Tell them you want a full inquiry into the Downing Street Memo. Tell them you want religion out of education and government. Tell them you want clean air, clean water, and a sustainable way of life. Tell them you want infrastructure spending, not military/industrial subsidies.
Tell them you want the future, not the past.
Tell them it’s time to represent the people instead of the corporate entities paying for politician’s travels, slush funds and campaign steamrollers. And not just the rich people, the white people or the Christian people… ALL of the people.
Most importantly, talk to everyone you meet and keep on talking. Tell them all of these important positions and then tell them again. It’s time to stop simply watching. It’s time to step up, even if it’s just by letting other people around know what you stand for and why. Don’t yell, don’t fight… just tell, and tell them to pass the message on.
Let’s take these vandals down.
020050416 22:17 •
Requiem.net.au sees increased aggression against Iran and Syria if John Bolton, Bush II’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations, gets the job.
It does fit the pattern. You can count on Bush, Inc. for three things: doublespeak, half-truth and outright lies. But I don’t see the irony Requiem does. I see a plan in action.
Here are a few reinforcing threads in the Republicans’ sophist tapestry:
Alberto Gonzales - The Attorney General is meant to represent the rule of law at the highest level. The US now has an Attorney General who advocates breaking international law and condoning torture to suit US interests.
Clear Skies Initiative - This ridiculously named boon for Big Pollution allows more pollution to be released than under our existing Clean Air Act, with self-policing by industry. As usual, Bush has the wolves guarding the sheep.
Healthy Forest Act - Just like Clear Skies, this only helps Big Business. Under this act, timber companies may chop down old-growth on public land and sell it for top dollar. It does not decrease the spread of forest fires as propagandized and it does not affect the health of the forest positively in any way, instead negatively impacting the environment and local ecosystems.
No Child Left Behind - NCLB furthers a system where only the wealthy receive quality education, and ultimately will convert the government funded American public school system to private schools paid for by parents. Again, private industry wins, the general public loses. No wonder Bush has underfunded education by over $27 billion.
The USA PATRIOT Act - Destroys civil liberties, privacy and the foundations of democratic process. PATRIOT enables the administration to brand anyone exercising their right to dissent and disagree with Bush, Inc. as an enemy of the state.
Private Accounts & Social Security’s imminent collapse - This entire boondoggle is solely to cover up the largest planned government re-assignment of wealth from the middle class to the corporate sector in history.
The War On Terror - Invading Iraq has created far more terrorists than killed. This effort should probably be renamed the War On Iraqi Civilians or The War For Oil.
Spending “political capital” from a “public mandate” - Bush lost the popular vote the first time and invaded two countries on the strength of that. For term two he pulled off a whopping 51% of the vote, so watch out.
A “culture of life” - This from the man who, as Governor of Texas, presided over more executions (152) than any other governor in history, spent only 15-30 minutes per prisoner deciding against clemency requests while granting only one, and himself signed the Texas Futile Care Law allowing health care providers to pull the plug on patients unable to pay for their life support.
A man of God - Guess Bush II only reads the Old Testament.
The 2000 election was a coup in the US government. In 2004 Bush, Inc. solidified its power through nationalism, fear (“Terrizm, terrizm, terrizm!”) and hellfire.
Until these guys are out, it will be more of the same.
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