WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iraq's stubborn guerrilla war, electrical blackouts, looting and chaos were born in Washington -- as US officials missed cues and battled over ideology, said a report.
"What do we mean by 'regime change,' anyway?" military commander Tommy Franks asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in the midst of the war, according to the issue of Newsweek that goes on sale Monday.
Franks and most of the Pentagon were focused on winning the war, which they did. But, the newsweekly said, the occupation was a second thought.
One example is the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"CPA stands for the Condescending and Patronizing Americans," a Baghdad diplomat told Newsweek.
"So there they are, sitting in their palace: 800 people, 17 of whom speak Arabic. One is an expert on Iraq."
What happened to the Iraq experts? According to Newsweek, Rumsfeld ordered 16 of the 20 Pentagon staffers picked to go to Baghdad be cut because they were "Arab apologists," had positive opinions of the United Nations (news - web sites) or other opinions not acceptable to the neo-conservatives running the US government.
Rumsfeld's interference "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion," a member of the original team said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is outside the neo-con circle reportedly told Rumsfeld: "I can take hostages, too," Newsweek said.
"How hard do you want to play this thing?"
Powell lost, Newsweek said. His number-two, Richard Armitage, gave at least a partial explanation for difficulties he had with Pentagon officials: spies.
"Bats," Newsweek reported Armitage as saying.
"Because they hang upside down all day, with their wings over their eyes, pretending they don't see anything. But at night, they spread their wings and fly off to whisper, whisper, whisper."
If those lines of communication worked well, others did not. White House staffers, especially national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), did not raise their objections to the postwar end game as they might have, Newsweek said.
While Pentagon officials derided the United Nations, the State Department was getting information from UN officials on the conditions of the infrastructure, especially the power grid, whose dilapidation took the Pentagon by surprise, the New York weekly said.
"We have until Ramadan to turn it around," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's emissary to the region, John Sawyers, told US officials. "After that it will be too late."
The Muslim month of prayer and fasting begins October 27.
"What do we mean by 'regime change,' anyway?" military commander Tommy Franks asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in the midst of the war, according to the issue of Newsweek that goes on sale Monday.
Franks and most of the Pentagon were focused on winning the war, which they did. But, the newsweekly said, the occupation was a second thought.
One example is the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"CPA stands for the Condescending and Patronizing Americans," a Baghdad diplomat told Newsweek.
"So there they are, sitting in their palace: 800 people, 17 of whom speak Arabic. One is an expert on Iraq."
What happened to the Iraq experts? According to Newsweek, Rumsfeld ordered 16 of the 20 Pentagon staffers picked to go to Baghdad be cut because they were "Arab apologists," had positive opinions of the United Nations (news - web sites) or other opinions not acceptable to the neo-conservatives running the US government.
Rumsfeld's interference "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion," a member of the original team said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is outside the neo-con circle reportedly told Rumsfeld: "I can take hostages, too," Newsweek said.
"How hard do you want to play this thing?"
Powell lost, Newsweek said. His number-two, Richard Armitage, gave at least a partial explanation for difficulties he had with Pentagon officials: spies.
"Bats," Newsweek reported Armitage as saying.
"Because they hang upside down all day, with their wings over their eyes, pretending they don't see anything. But at night, they spread their wings and fly off to whisper, whisper, whisper."
If those lines of communication worked well, others did not. White House staffers, especially national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), did not raise their objections to the postwar end game as they might have, Newsweek said.
While Pentagon officials derided the United Nations, the State Department was getting information from UN officials on the conditions of the infrastructure, especially the power grid, whose dilapidation took the Pentagon by surprise, the New York weekly said.
"We have until Ramadan to turn it around," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's emissary to the region, John Sawyers, told US officials. "After that it will be too late."
The Muslim month of prayer and fasting begins October 27.
How to ruin a great army? See Donald Rumsfeld
WASHINGTON - Armies are fragile institutions, and for all their might, easily broken.
It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam. With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, now perhaps the finest Army in history.
In just over three years, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army....
WASHINGTON - Armies are fragile institutions, and for all their might, easily broken.
It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam. With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, now perhaps the finest Army in history.
In just over three years, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army....
An element of stupidity
The neocons really, really believe that Americans are stupid - not just a bit thick, but slack-jawed, bumping-up-against-glass-like-a-fly stupid.
They oppose voting printouts that leave a paper trail, so that we can tell you won the election without leaving an element of doubt. Their reply:
"Libruls are evil!"
"Um, so why not have a paper trail? Doesn't that sound like a good idea?"
"Libruls are evil!"
Instead of having a coherent answer to criticism of their expensive boondoggle, radical, untested new paperless voting machines, they accuse Americans who prefer traditional voting of being "partisan" (Gee, why would electing the winner be partisan?)
and, get this, trying to "create an element of doubt" as to who won the election. Um, don't you think FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS WITH NO PAPER TRAIL might perhaps, possible cause an element of doubt? Do ya?
Let me rephrase this - the neocons aren't stupid, they're just despotic America-hating crooks. It's anyone who trusts these monsters - if anyone actually does - who are stupid.
The neocons really, really believe that Americans are stupid - not just a bit thick, but slack-jawed, bumping-up-against-glass-like-a-fly stupid.
They oppose voting printouts that leave a paper trail, so that we can tell you won the election without leaving an element of doubt. Their reply:
"Libruls are evil!"
"Um, so why not have a paper trail? Doesn't that sound like a good idea?"
"Libruls are evil!"
Instead of having a coherent answer to criticism of their expensive boondoggle, radical, untested new paperless voting machines, they accuse Americans who prefer traditional voting of being "partisan" (Gee, why would electing the winner be partisan?)
and, get this, trying to "create an element of doubt" as to who won the election. Um, don't you think FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS WITH NO PAPER TRAIL might perhaps, possible cause an element of doubt? Do ya?
Let me rephrase this - the neocons aren't stupid, they're just despotic America-hating crooks. It's anyone who trusts these monsters - if anyone actually does - who are stupid.
Now the Buushists are trying to attack General Clark by linking him to Clinton.
This is supposed to HURT him?
This is supposed to HURT him?
Some oldies but Goodies today:
The Hussien Boys arrive in hell:
Dick Nixon: “Howdy boys! What you been up to?”
Hussien boys: “Oh, the usual, invading weak middle eastern nations to steal their oil, spending poor people’s money on ourselves and our cronies, wrapping ourselves in the nations flag and denouncing our opponents as unpatriotic….”
Dick Nixon: “So what did Bush kill you for?”
Hussien Boys: “He was afraid we’d beat him in the Republican primary.”
Strom Thurgood: “Your molten lead enema will be in a few minutes. If you want my advice, wear a pink dress. Satan has a weakness for pink dresses.”
Joe McCarthy: “Weakness, eh? I’ll report this Satan fellow to the House Committee of UnHellish activities! By the way, Strom, how come you’ve got a tattoo on your butt that says “colored entrance only“?”
Reagan’s brain: “So when’s this Bin Laden fellow going to show up? I called him a freedom fighter and compared him to the founding fathers, but I still haven’t got a chance to meet him.”
Hussien Boys: “Oh, he needs to stay alive to keep Bushes approval ratings up. Hang tough everyone, it’s for a good cause.”
Dick Nixon: “Too bad….I bet he can’t wait to meet those 70 virgins.”
Hussien Boys: “What? You mean all that stuff about the 70 virgins is TRUE?”
Dick Nixon: “Yep, they’re right down the hall! Listen carefully, you can hear them sharpening their Bobbit-o-matic knives as we speak!”
Random rant-dom:
Some debates: (The Bushist is in italics)
“>Tell me what you did during Bubba, the >Pervert Clinton's "wag the dog" war in >Yugoslavia????”
"Wag the Dog" was AFGANISTAN! Clinton was bombing Osama Bin Laden, but republicans came to Osama Bin Laden's defense, saying that their investigation of Clinton's penis was more important - and that bombing Osama Bin Laden was distracting the media from the important issues! All of those people who jumped to their deaths to escape the flames on 9/11 can thank the Republican Congress, who even had 700+ FBI agents searching for semen stains in Arkansas, exactly when Osama Bin Laden was already bombing our embassies.
It was the MOVIE, titled Wag the Dog, in which a FICTIONAL president wags the dog in Yugoslavia.
That republicans are incapable of telling the difference between their own memories and a movie they saw is no surprise. Once Reagan regaled Medal of Honor recipients with his "war stories" - which turned out to the movie "On a wing and a prayer".
This of course was the same Reagan that compared the Afgan Islamic fanatics to the founding fathers.
___________________________________________
>FDR won reelection with only about 53% of >the vote;this for the man who, it was widely >believed, single-handedly saved the country >from the depression. 300,000 KIA in a >population of 144 million will do that.
Uh, do those dead people buy things and employ people? Do those dead people make investments, pay taxes, etc?
The economic ignorance of republicans is unbelievable! No wonder whenever republicans get power there's a recession!
Killing people good for the economy? Gimme a break!
A quote I found, dealing with the firing of soldiers who spoke up about Iraq:
I'll hand it to the Pentagon. They can't seem to get the electricity up and running, three months after the war ended. They can't seem to find any WMD, three months after the war ended. They can't seem to get any civil order going, three months after the war ended. But when they learn of some soldiers bitching about Rumsfeld, man, we're talking 24 hour turnaround from broadcast to stockade. The Pentagon can be fast when it wants to.
On the 9/11 coverup:
I mean, they've found and counted 84,0000 pieces from the Columbia space shuttle, yet they still can't find ONE of the FOUR black boxes from 9/11, and whenever anyone tries to investigate, the Bush Administration screams "I didn't do it! No-one saw me do it! You can't prove anything! Asking questions is unpatriotic!"
50 million dollars is being spent to investigate the Columbia, and only 3 on 9/11. Gee, why would someone commit a coverup if they had nothing to hide?
The Hussien Boys arrive in hell:
Dick Nixon: “Howdy boys! What you been up to?”
Hussien boys: “Oh, the usual, invading weak middle eastern nations to steal their oil, spending poor people’s money on ourselves and our cronies, wrapping ourselves in the nations flag and denouncing our opponents as unpatriotic….”
Dick Nixon: “So what did Bush kill you for?”
Hussien Boys: “He was afraid we’d beat him in the Republican primary.”
Strom Thurgood: “Your molten lead enema will be in a few minutes. If you want my advice, wear a pink dress. Satan has a weakness for pink dresses.”
Joe McCarthy: “Weakness, eh? I’ll report this Satan fellow to the House Committee of UnHellish activities! By the way, Strom, how come you’ve got a tattoo on your butt that says “colored entrance only“?”
Reagan’s brain: “So when’s this Bin Laden fellow going to show up? I called him a freedom fighter and compared him to the founding fathers, but I still haven’t got a chance to meet him.”
Hussien Boys: “Oh, he needs to stay alive to keep Bushes approval ratings up. Hang tough everyone, it’s for a good cause.”
Dick Nixon: “Too bad….I bet he can’t wait to meet those 70 virgins.”
Hussien Boys: “What? You mean all that stuff about the 70 virgins is TRUE?”
Dick Nixon: “Yep, they’re right down the hall! Listen carefully, you can hear them sharpening their Bobbit-o-matic knives as we speak!”
Random rant-dom:
Some debates: (The Bushist is in italics)
“>Tell me what you did during Bubba, the >Pervert Clinton's "wag the dog" war in >Yugoslavia????”
"Wag the Dog" was AFGANISTAN! Clinton was bombing Osama Bin Laden, but republicans came to Osama Bin Laden's defense, saying that their investigation of Clinton's penis was more important - and that bombing Osama Bin Laden was distracting the media from the important issues! All of those people who jumped to their deaths to escape the flames on 9/11 can thank the Republican Congress, who even had 700+ FBI agents searching for semen stains in Arkansas, exactly when Osama Bin Laden was already bombing our embassies.
It was the MOVIE, titled Wag the Dog, in which a FICTIONAL president wags the dog in Yugoslavia.
That republicans are incapable of telling the difference between their own memories and a movie they saw is no surprise. Once Reagan regaled Medal of Honor recipients with his "war stories" - which turned out to the movie "On a wing and a prayer".
This of course was the same Reagan that compared the Afgan Islamic fanatics to the founding fathers.
___________________________________________
>FDR won reelection with only about 53% of >the vote;this for the man who, it was widely >believed, single-handedly saved the country >from the depression. 300,000 KIA in a >population of 144 million will do that.
Uh, do those dead people buy things and employ people? Do those dead people make investments, pay taxes, etc?
The economic ignorance of republicans is unbelievable! No wonder whenever republicans get power there's a recession!
Killing people good for the economy? Gimme a break!
A quote I found, dealing with the firing of soldiers who spoke up about Iraq:
I'll hand it to the Pentagon. They can't seem to get the electricity up and running, three months after the war ended. They can't seem to find any WMD, three months after the war ended. They can't seem to get any civil order going, three months after the war ended. But when they learn of some soldiers bitching about Rumsfeld, man, we're talking 24 hour turnaround from broadcast to stockade. The Pentagon can be fast when it wants to.
On the 9/11 coverup:
I mean, they've found and counted 84,0000 pieces from the Columbia space shuttle, yet they still can't find ONE of the FOUR black boxes from 9/11, and whenever anyone tries to investigate, the Bush Administration screams "I didn't do it! No-one saw me do it! You can't prove anything! Asking questions is unpatriotic!"
50 million dollars is being spent to investigate the Columbia, and only 3 on 9/11. Gee, why would someone commit a coverup if they had nothing to hide?
Grim poverty stalks through our land. It embitters the present and darkens the future. Under-nourishment, poor standards of living and inadequate medical care of today will make themselves felt among our children for 50 years to come. These unhappy times call forth building of plans that rest upon the forgotten American at the bottom of the pyramid.
I copied these from FDR quotes. Today seems very similar to 1933.
I copied these from FDR quotes. Today seems very similar to 1933.
The importance of Populism
Those who talk populism will be sneered at by the neocons as “class warriors”. Let ‘em. Homeless families, maimed soldiers who have to pay for hospital food while their commander in chief is out fundraising - these people know what real-life class warfare is.
Without populism, politics becomes just a tug of war between a bunch of various interest groups, that nobody is interested in. Bushists can confuse the issues by claiming they want to “save social security” and other things that are the complete opposite of their political philosophy - because without populism, there IS no political philosophy. The Bushists even tried to blame Enron and other corporate scandals on democrats!
Some people need to be reminded that the greatest document in human history does not begin with “We the corporate donations” or “We the HMOs” or “We the Tobacco companies” or “We the Enron insiders” - it is WE THE PEOPLE.
Repeat after me:
WE THE PEOPLE.
I can’t here you!
WE THE PEOPLE!
(Just kidding, I could hear you, I was just being rhetorical. But anyway, just one more time: )
WE THE PEOPLE!
Those who talk populism will be sneered at by the neocons as “class warriors”. Let ‘em. Homeless families, maimed soldiers who have to pay for hospital food while their commander in chief is out fundraising - these people know what real-life class warfare is.
Without populism, politics becomes just a tug of war between a bunch of various interest groups, that nobody is interested in. Bushists can confuse the issues by claiming they want to “save social security” and other things that are the complete opposite of their political philosophy - because without populism, there IS no political philosophy. The Bushists even tried to blame Enron and other corporate scandals on democrats!
Some people need to be reminded that the greatest document in human history does not begin with “We the corporate donations” or “We the HMOs” or “We the Tobacco companies” or “We the Enron insiders” - it is WE THE PEOPLE.
Repeat after me:
WE THE PEOPLE.
I can’t here you!
WE THE PEOPLE!
(Just kidding, I could hear you, I was just being rhetorical. But anyway, just one more time: )
WE THE PEOPLE!
Here's a letter I've sent to the DLC:
Dear DLC and NDOL:
The DLC and New Democrats have, in the past, come up with good ideas, such as stealing away issues like crime, debt, “family values”, size of government, “welfare queens”, volunteerism, and so on. I have read the first page of the New Democrats’ Declaration, and support every word of it. The ten points on guns are also winners as well as other ideas I have read. I think that Clark is a great Bush-buster and the way Edwards has turned GOP arguments and rhetoric on their heads is sheer genius.
However, these ideas might fall on deaf ears if you alienate the mass of the democratic party. Many suspect the DLC is a just a corporate lobby group - or even a republican front.
When a democrat engages in populism - the idea that we should choose leaders with votes, rather than fund-raising - I have heard it called “class warfare” and the politics of “envy”. Coincidently, I’m sure, that’s the exact same words Karl Rove is trying to ram into America’s heads.
I would like to see more talk about the republican tactic of stirring up envy and turning it to hatred - somebody needs to take on the republican hate-speech of “cultural elite” “rich trial lawyers” “the Hollywood elite” “Harvard boutique” “limosine liberals” and an upcoming book, “Shut up and sing” which will be a personal attack on celebrities. Not to mention the Bush policies destructive effects on the middle class and below - liberal class warfare, not rhetorical.
Getting elected is about managing to both energize the activists and convince the swing voters. An emphasis on swing voters is a good thing, in fact, it‘s half of the election. If you want to praise candidates that you feel are doing well with swing voters, please do. If there are other candidates you don’t agree with, ignore them.
However, assuming that only activists or swing voters alone can win is a mistake.
Another mistake is confusing the mass of swing voters in the political middle with the corporate campaign contributors in the political middle.
What makes Dean so radical? He’s from a state a few neoconfederate sworn-to-the-death republicans hate, and something or other about civil unions, which would only interest die-hard fundamentalists who are already working with the GOP for fear they’ll burn in hell for all eternity if they don’t. That’s the only differences between him and every other centrist. As for war, he believes we should “enlist our friends in a worldwide fight for freedom, not inspire more enemies to thwart the American cause.” to quote your own declaration.
So what is so frightening? Oh, right….He’s got the G word. Dare I say it - grassroots support.
Do the swing voters worry about which candidate has more activists, or how enthusiastic they are? Corporate campaign contributors do, they’re afraid of losing clout to grassroots volunteering and, more importantly, grassroots cash.
If I didn’t know better I would think that the New Democrat vision of public spirit is for 50.00001% of the voting population to sit on a couch and go pull a lever every two years. I have not seen the DLC declare “You have the power!” I have not seen masses of activists brimming with hope, energy, and determination, not to mention donations, at anything DLC.
Let’s look at quote, shall we?
"I was raised to believe that the American dream was built on rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks in Washington turn the American ethic on its head. For too long, those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft. And those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded."
Sounds like a protest vote, doesn’t he? Another McGovern, with activists but no swing voters….
Actually, it’s Bill Clinton, accepting his nomination. Our only real political gain in a quarter of a century, including more than a decade of the DLC.
And what’s with McGovern? I thought his problem was that his supporters were freakish counterculture outsiders with no concept of political reality. Dean supporters are simply democrats, independents and republicans who have actually decided to do something instead of watch on TV. Perhaps this seems freakish and countercultural to those born and bred in corporate campaign counting, grassroots-free politics, but it’s not. As I wrote when I thought about my own personal experience:
“For as long as I’ve taken interest in politics, in every forum I’ve participated in, it seemed to have been taken for granted that the world is going to ruin and that political activism meant that you sat there and morbidly watched. The Dean for America community is completely different, so much so that when I first discovered it I found it hard to believe that they were even democrats at all.
I don’t see the negativism, despair, and frustration I’ve seen for so many years.
This is what’s brought me to Dean, not the meetups and blogs (they don’t create activists from thin air, just ask his imitators) not the policies (other than guns there’s nothing I’ve noticed) not the speaking (I’ve never heard him and have only seen still photos) not the much hyped-anger (any sane person in this day is either angry or insincere) it’s the people. Other politicians only want to be loved. Dean himself has said that it’s not about agreeing with him on everything, it’s about ordinary Americans coming together and becoming active in restoring to glory the nation they love.”
Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about having only activists but no swing voters, and worry about having only middle-of-the-road cred and nobody who gives a rodent’s rectum.
But my point (and I do have one) is that while we can all disagree, is that we should not believe that supporting either activists or swing voters will be to the detriment to the other group. That is divisive nonsense that can only split our party. Dean is a centrist who liberals are supporting enthusiastically. If that's not an obvious chance for the two wings of the party to come together, I don't know what is.
Also, never, ever attack a democrat, especially if, like Dean, he is likely to be either a candidate for President or Vice President.
In the near future we will see Karl Rove throw a quarter billion dollars into TV ads proclaiming “Even his fellow democrats know he’s just a protest vote for class warring extremists….” and then they will start quoting DLC and NDOL articles.
What will that do for your precious swing voters?
Dear DLC and NDOL:
The DLC and New Democrats have, in the past, come up with good ideas, such as stealing away issues like crime, debt, “family values”, size of government, “welfare queens”, volunteerism, and so on. I have read the first page of the New Democrats’ Declaration, and support every word of it. The ten points on guns are also winners as well as other ideas I have read. I think that Clark is a great Bush-buster and the way Edwards has turned GOP arguments and rhetoric on their heads is sheer genius.
However, these ideas might fall on deaf ears if you alienate the mass of the democratic party. Many suspect the DLC is a just a corporate lobby group - or even a republican front.
When a democrat engages in populism - the idea that we should choose leaders with votes, rather than fund-raising - I have heard it called “class warfare” and the politics of “envy”. Coincidently, I’m sure, that’s the exact same words Karl Rove is trying to ram into America’s heads.
I would like to see more talk about the republican tactic of stirring up envy and turning it to hatred - somebody needs to take on the republican hate-speech of “cultural elite” “rich trial lawyers” “the Hollywood elite” “Harvard boutique” “limosine liberals” and an upcoming book, “Shut up and sing” which will be a personal attack on celebrities. Not to mention the Bush policies destructive effects on the middle class and below - liberal class warfare, not rhetorical.
Getting elected is about managing to both energize the activists and convince the swing voters. An emphasis on swing voters is a good thing, in fact, it‘s half of the election. If you want to praise candidates that you feel are doing well with swing voters, please do. If there are other candidates you don’t agree with, ignore them.
However, assuming that only activists or swing voters alone can win is a mistake.
Another mistake is confusing the mass of swing voters in the political middle with the corporate campaign contributors in the political middle.
What makes Dean so radical? He’s from a state a few neoconfederate sworn-to-the-death republicans hate, and something or other about civil unions, which would only interest die-hard fundamentalists who are already working with the GOP for fear they’ll burn in hell for all eternity if they don’t. That’s the only differences between him and every other centrist. As for war, he believes we should “enlist our friends in a worldwide fight for freedom, not inspire more enemies to thwart the American cause.” to quote your own declaration.
So what is so frightening? Oh, right….He’s got the G word. Dare I say it - grassroots support.
Do the swing voters worry about which candidate has more activists, or how enthusiastic they are? Corporate campaign contributors do, they’re afraid of losing clout to grassroots volunteering and, more importantly, grassroots cash.
If I didn’t know better I would think that the New Democrat vision of public spirit is for 50.00001% of the voting population to sit on a couch and go pull a lever every two years. I have not seen the DLC declare “You have the power!” I have not seen masses of activists brimming with hope, energy, and determination, not to mention donations, at anything DLC.
Let’s look at quote, shall we?
"I was raised to believe that the American dream was built on rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks in Washington turn the American ethic on its head. For too long, those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft. And those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded."
Sounds like a protest vote, doesn’t he? Another McGovern, with activists but no swing voters….
Actually, it’s Bill Clinton, accepting his nomination. Our only real political gain in a quarter of a century, including more than a decade of the DLC.
And what’s with McGovern? I thought his problem was that his supporters were freakish counterculture outsiders with no concept of political reality. Dean supporters are simply democrats, independents and republicans who have actually decided to do something instead of watch on TV. Perhaps this seems freakish and countercultural to those born and bred in corporate campaign counting, grassroots-free politics, but it’s not. As I wrote when I thought about my own personal experience:
“For as long as I’ve taken interest in politics, in every forum I’ve participated in, it seemed to have been taken for granted that the world is going to ruin and that political activism meant that you sat there and morbidly watched. The Dean for America community is completely different, so much so that when I first discovered it I found it hard to believe that they were even democrats at all.
I don’t see the negativism, despair, and frustration I’ve seen for so many years.
This is what’s brought me to Dean, not the meetups and blogs (they don’t create activists from thin air, just ask his imitators) not the policies (other than guns there’s nothing I’ve noticed) not the speaking (I’ve never heard him and have only seen still photos) not the much hyped-anger (any sane person in this day is either angry or insincere) it’s the people. Other politicians only want to be loved. Dean himself has said that it’s not about agreeing with him on everything, it’s about ordinary Americans coming together and becoming active in restoring to glory the nation they love.”
Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about having only activists but no swing voters, and worry about having only middle-of-the-road cred and nobody who gives a rodent’s rectum.
But my point (and I do have one) is that while we can all disagree, is that we should not believe that supporting either activists or swing voters will be to the detriment to the other group. That is divisive nonsense that can only split our party. Dean is a centrist who liberals are supporting enthusiastically. If that's not an obvious chance for the two wings of the party to come together, I don't know what is.
Also, never, ever attack a democrat, especially if, like Dean, he is likely to be either a candidate for President or Vice President.
In the near future we will see Karl Rove throw a quarter billion dollars into TV ads proclaiming “Even his fellow democrats know he’s just a protest vote for class warring extremists….” and then they will start quoting DLC and NDOL articles.
What will that do for your precious swing voters?
Which political philosophy is for me?
In this fast-paced, confusing world, it’s tough to make decisions like political philosophy. Should I choose brand A or brand B? Is there any difference?
YES!
Welcome to the Instamatic [TM] political philosophy quiz! Specially formulated to analyze your demographic data and beliefs, it will match you with your ideal political philosophy, with an accuracy rate of 99.999% !
It answers the burning question: which political philosophy has done more for me? Who should I “thank” with my vote?
Let’s begin:
If you do not have skin cancer, and have ever stood outside without having a peeling sunburn within seconds, thank the ozone layer, thank the ban on CFCs, and thank a liberal.
If you ever wore something, talked, or walked in a way that might have looked “gay” to some insecure redneck, and were not beaten or murdered for, it thank a liberal.
If you have not died in a heat wave, drought, hurricane, flood, wildfire, or other climate change disaster, and like the idea of your children and grandchildren not living in desert wastelands, thank a liberal.
If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.
If no woman you know has died or been maimed in a back-alley abortion, thank a liberal.
If you have never been lynched, or your children firebombed in a church, thank a liberal.
If you are glad we don’t live in a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of what conservatives overtly and covertly created in Iran, Guatamala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Phillipines, Indonesia and many others, thank a liberal.
If you have ever used Medicare, thank a liberal.
If you have not gotten cancer from radiation, thank the nuclear test ban and thank a liberal.
If you have ever sat on a public seat, drank from a drinking fountain, stood on a bus, or done anything in public without worrying about being beaten up for being in the wrong section for your skin color, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.
If you grew up in a family of less than 12 kids, like the idea of being able to choose if you have 12 kids or not, if you don’t live in an overpopulated third world hell, or just think birth control is a good idea, thank a liberal.
If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, thank a liberal.
If you have ever bought anything from Europe, and are glad the Marshall plan kept it from remained a bombed-out shell or falling to communism or neo-fascism, thank a liberal.
If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them) thank a liberal.
If you have ever eaten food (agricultural subsidies), flicked on a light switch (rural electrification) or benefited from the Tennessee Valley Authority, thank a liberal.
If you ever drank a beer or a glass of wine without being thrown in jail, thank a liberal.
If you are not a land-owning white male, but have voted, thank a liberal.
If you have not died from tainted meat, been prescribed something useless or poisonous by a quack doctor, have not given your children cough syrup which turned out to have heroin as its secret ingredient, thank a liberal.
If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being lynched, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever seen a national park, and it hadn’t been strip mined and clearcut into a desert wasteland, thank a liberal.
If you have never suffered from an economy of massive deflation, and have never even heard of an economic phenomenon called a “panic”, thank a liberal.
If your children go to school instead of working in coal mines, thank a liberal.
If you’re a Native American and have not been killed or died in a concentration camp, or if you live near Native Americans and are not at war with them, thank a liberal.
If you have an industrial or high-tech job - or really, any job other than those available in a slave-powered cash crop economy (ie, a third world economy) thank a liberal.
If you’re not a slave or “indentured servant” (white slave), don’t think protection of slavery belongs in the constitution, if you’ve never been chained to a boat where half the passengers die, been whipped, had your family split up, been forced to “breed” with another slave you’ve never met, been raped by your boss, or killed for not being profitable, thank a liberal.
If you oppose political parties starting massive wars to destroy America, just because they lost the election, and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in process - if you just don’t have that much fanatical hatred of Lincoln’s policy of to restricting slavery to states where it already existed, thank a liberal.
If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and are allowed to live in America, and are not harassed and attacked for failing to be born Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or if you’ve ever bought or used anything built by a non-ASP American, thank a liberal.
If you kind of like freedom of speech, and don’t want the state government to be able to censor you - (you think the 14th amendment is a good idea) - thank a liberal.
If you have ever bought or sold anything transported by the transcontinental railroad, or eaten food from a farm created by the railroad, thank a liberal.
If you think the US constitution is pretty cool, and have ever traveled too or done business with a country whose democracy was inspired by the American revolution, thank a liberal.
If you have not been drafted and used as cannon-fodder in some war caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders, or other various overfed dictators, or suffered rape or looting in one of those countless wars, thank a liberal.
If you have not been tortured to death in a religious inquisition, thank a liberal.
If you don’t have to walk though ankle-deep sh!t in the streets (because sewers are big gummint), thank a liberal.
If you are bisexual (or ever got curious) and have not been stoned to death, or ever did business with someone who is bisexual (or ever got curious), thank a liberal.
If you have ever done anything that is a religious or superstitious taboo (ie, done anything at all) without being stoned to death or cast out as a heretic, in the name of religion, thank a liberal.
If you have never been raped, and then had the rapist escape punishment on the grounds that he marry you, thank a liberal.
If you are not a slave toiling to build a pyramid for some lazy dictator who’s so spoiled he thinks he’s god, and won’t even see it until he’s dead, thank a liberal.
If you have not been killed as a human sacrifice in the name of religion, thank a liberal.
…And if not, become a conservative.
“Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people…” - Joe Conason
In this fast-paced, confusing world, it’s tough to make decisions like political philosophy. Should I choose brand A or brand B? Is there any difference?
YES!
Welcome to the Instamatic [TM] political philosophy quiz! Specially formulated to analyze your demographic data and beliefs, it will match you with your ideal political philosophy, with an accuracy rate of 99.999% !
It answers the burning question: which political philosophy has done more for me? Who should I “thank” with my vote?
Let’s begin:
If you do not have skin cancer, and have ever stood outside without having a peeling sunburn within seconds, thank the ozone layer, thank the ban on CFCs, and thank a liberal.
If you ever wore something, talked, or walked in a way that might have looked “gay” to some insecure redneck, and were not beaten or murdered for, it thank a liberal.
If you have not died in a heat wave, drought, hurricane, flood, wildfire, or other climate change disaster, and like the idea of your children and grandchildren not living in desert wastelands, thank a liberal.
If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.
If no woman you know has died or been maimed in a back-alley abortion, thank a liberal.
If you have never been lynched, or your children firebombed in a church, thank a liberal.
If you are glad we don’t live in a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of what conservatives overtly and covertly created in Iran, Guatamala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Phillipines, Indonesia and many others, thank a liberal.
If you have ever used Medicare, thank a liberal.
If you have not gotten cancer from radiation, thank the nuclear test ban and thank a liberal.
If you have ever sat on a public seat, drank from a drinking fountain, stood on a bus, or done anything in public without worrying about being beaten up for being in the wrong section for your skin color, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.
If you grew up in a family of less than 12 kids, like the idea of being able to choose if you have 12 kids or not, if you don’t live in an overpopulated third world hell, or just think birth control is a good idea, thank a liberal.
If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, thank a liberal.
If you have ever bought anything from Europe, and are glad the Marshall plan kept it from remained a bombed-out shell or falling to communism or neo-fascism, thank a liberal.
If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them) thank a liberal.
If you have ever eaten food (agricultural subsidies), flicked on a light switch (rural electrification) or benefited from the Tennessee Valley Authority, thank a liberal.
If you ever drank a beer or a glass of wine without being thrown in jail, thank a liberal.
If you are not a land-owning white male, but have voted, thank a liberal.
If you have not died from tainted meat, been prescribed something useless or poisonous by a quack doctor, have not given your children cough syrup which turned out to have heroin as its secret ingredient, thank a liberal.
If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being lynched, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever seen a national park, and it hadn’t been strip mined and clearcut into a desert wasteland, thank a liberal.
If you have never suffered from an economy of massive deflation, and have never even heard of an economic phenomenon called a “panic”, thank a liberal.
If your children go to school instead of working in coal mines, thank a liberal.
If you’re a Native American and have not been killed or died in a concentration camp, or if you live near Native Americans and are not at war with them, thank a liberal.
If you have an industrial or high-tech job - or really, any job other than those available in a slave-powered cash crop economy (ie, a third world economy) thank a liberal.
If you’re not a slave or “indentured servant” (white slave), don’t think protection of slavery belongs in the constitution, if you’ve never been chained to a boat where half the passengers die, been whipped, had your family split up, been forced to “breed” with another slave you’ve never met, been raped by your boss, or killed for not being profitable, thank a liberal.
If you oppose political parties starting massive wars to destroy America, just because they lost the election, and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in process - if you just don’t have that much fanatical hatred of Lincoln’s policy of to restricting slavery to states where it already existed, thank a liberal.
If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and are allowed to live in America, and are not harassed and attacked for failing to be born Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or if you’ve ever bought or used anything built by a non-ASP American, thank a liberal.
If you kind of like freedom of speech, and don’t want the state government to be able to censor you - (you think the 14th amendment is a good idea) - thank a liberal.
If you have ever bought or sold anything transported by the transcontinental railroad, or eaten food from a farm created by the railroad, thank a liberal.
If you think the US constitution is pretty cool, and have ever traveled too or done business with a country whose democracy was inspired by the American revolution, thank a liberal.
If you have not been drafted and used as cannon-fodder in some war caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders, or other various overfed dictators, or suffered rape or looting in one of those countless wars, thank a liberal.
If you have not been tortured to death in a religious inquisition, thank a liberal.
If you don’t have to walk though ankle-deep sh!t in the streets (because sewers are big gummint), thank a liberal.
If you are bisexual (or ever got curious) and have not been stoned to death, or ever did business with someone who is bisexual (or ever got curious), thank a liberal.
If you have ever done anything that is a religious or superstitious taboo (ie, done anything at all) without being stoned to death or cast out as a heretic, in the name of religion, thank a liberal.
If you have never been raped, and then had the rapist escape punishment on the grounds that he marry you, thank a liberal.
If you are not a slave toiling to build a pyramid for some lazy dictator who’s so spoiled he thinks he’s god, and won’t even see it until he’s dead, thank a liberal.
If you have not been killed as a human sacrifice in the name of religion, thank a liberal.
…And if not, become a conservative.
“Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people…” - Joe Conason
Satire: Time for a total boycott of liberalism and big government
Every true conservative knows that liberals and big government are useless, and in fact destructive. Therefore, the obvious way to a better life is to have an entire culture and economy that functions, on its own, without touching anything contaminated by liberals and government.
Some republicans might get weak at the knees at some of my suggestions, but just tell them they’re hypocrites to say they oppose liberals yet deal with them all the time.
So, let’s get started right now!
First, stop paying your taxes, obviously. Lots of rich republicans and corporations already don’t, so you can skip this paragraph.
Secondly, if you’re not a land-owning white male, don’t vote. Liberals, class-warriors, feminazis and so on expanded voting, and obviously those people don’t know what’s best for non-whites and women! If a non-white or female tells you to vote republican, tell them they’re hypocrites and a traitor to the conservative cause.
Now, unplug your internet. It’s a failure because it was funded by the government, as suggested by Al Gore. Don’t use any satellite communications, those are contaminated with government failure, and don’t ever listen to a weather report, because those come from government weather satellites.
Don’t ever call the police or fire department, those are government, ie failed liberal programs. We’re all gun owners, and whoever heard of a crime involving guns? Just make sure you’re good at haggling once the private fire department comes!
You can fly a plane, but don’t use failed big government air traffic control, or airport security, which was federalized after 9/11, despite our opposition. We don’t really need them anyway because there’s no gun control on our planes - anyone can bring on bombs, it says that in the second amendment, read it for yourself. Oh, and we can’t have any of that failed program, “air marshals”. If terrorists highjack our plane, hire mercenaries with your own money, because the pentagon is a typical big-government failed program, and Howard Dean supported war on Afghanistan.
Don’t travel on public roads. We’ll make our own, and have toll booths. If one mile has no driving regulations, and the next mile has different lanes for blacks and whites, let them, they have a right to their private property.
Don’t use sewers or water pipes. Don’t buy bottled water, that’s just government tap water in a private bottle. Instead, drink from the same lake you dump sewage in. Don’t touch electrical grids. The recent power outage was caused by Ohio’s deregulated system, which is proof we need a totally deregulated, privatized system everywhere. If the electric monopoly demands you pay for your electricity by letting the boss screw your daughter, well, they have a right to their private property.
Don’t use that failed socialist program, the judicial system. We can all hire our own judges and juries, or maybe just use the tried, tested and true system of trial by fire, like we did in the good old days. It was good enough for my ancestors, so it’s good enough for me!
Don’t touch big-government Bolshevik welfare schemes like the US Patent Office. Either hire Enron to remember who invented what, or just declare war on someone if they steal your invention.
Avoid the big government tyranny of land records and enforcement of property and contract rights. If someone disagrees with you over who owns what, just shoot him!
Don’t ever look at labeling when you shop. The socialists insisted on those. Carry your own scales. If a republican store messes with their scales or lies on their labeling (or doesn’t label at all) there’s probably another store within a few miles. If you die from tainted meat, well, the maker will go out of business. If you make tainted meat, you’ll run out of customers, once they’re all dead. Obviously that system worked pretty well before food testing!
Obviously, don’t ever join a Union. If your boss rapes you, either find another boss you rapes you less often, or just stick with the age-old tactic of sabotage.
Don’t go anywhere near that horrible, work-ethic destroying US dollar! Either use the gold standard, or just barter, two cows for a wife, or whatever. Enron could print perfectly good money, and we conservatives know lots about currency - just look at how well the economy of the Confederate States of America worked!
Tree-huggers stopped open air nuclear testing and have all sorts of nonsense regulations about burying nuclear waste and so on. These tree huggers have only made the environment worse! Simulate a better environment by eating carcinogens and getting cancer to simulate radiation.
Obviously, don’t accept farm subsidies, and when you buy food, pay extra to cover the cost, because the farm subsidies artificially lower prices.
Send your kids to work in a coal mine, as was done before the evil liberals replaced child labor with public education. You don’t want them going soft in the permissive liberal society. Then force them to join the army, whether they want to or not, because the liberals got rid of the draft. And because of the peaceniks, there’s not enough wars - you can make up for this by throwing a frag grenade into your kid’s barracks every now and them.
Don’t have anything to do with the evil tyranny of the CFC ban. Until we’ve managed to destroy the ozone layer (canceling out the destructive events of this socialist policy ) we can eat carcinogens to give ourselves skin cancer and burn our skin to simulate the sunburns that we’ll have the freedom to enjoy once the ozone layer is gone.
Liberals don’t like gay bashing, and everyone knows liberal ideas lead to failure. If you see anyone wearing something, talking, or walking in a way that might possibly look “gay”, beat him up or lynch him. If you look gay, punch yourself or commit suicide.
Liberals are delaying climate change. To compensate for this failed policy, move to a desert, swamp, or somewhere under several feet of ocean.
Tree-huggers are destroying America with their obsession with clean air and water. Compensate for this by not flushing your toilet (sewers are a socialist program anyway) and drinking from there. Take a few good breaths from your car muffler and pour acid into your fish tank and swimming pool to further reduce the effects of liberal tyranny.
The permissive, evil, baby-killing liberals have stopped back-alley abortions. If you’re a woman, mutilate yourself with a coat hanger to recreate the moral, god-fearing good old days.
The liberal whine-fest has not improved things for blacks one bit. If you see a black boy look at a black girl, lynch him. Firebomb a few little black girls in a church, and blacks will finally realize how much better off they are without the whining liberals.
Of course, you can also move to a third-world, right-wing dictatorship, the likes of which we conservatives covertly, and sometimes overtly created throughout the world (in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia) - and the type that liberals hate so much. (Sadly, many of these dictatorships have fallen into democracy, but you can still move to the middle east, a god-fearing land).
Obviously, don’t use Medicare, and don’t buy drugs from Canada!
Public transportation is evil - if one Bus driver wants to be paid with oral sex, wait for the next bus. And make sure you always sit only in one section - because the liberal desegregation movement was a typical liberal failure. If you accidentally drink from the wrong drinking fountain, and so on, beat yourself or commit suicide.
God-hating liberal feminazis created and legalized birth control, which has ruined our nation. Compensate for this by adopting 12 kids, and then moving to a no-birth-control overcrowded slum in the third world.
If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, send the money back. If you were educated in a socialist, ivory-tower intellectual university, or evil public education, there are various chemicals you can drink that destroy memory.
Don’t buy anything from Europe, obviously. Also don’t sell anything to Europe, and send back anything you have from Europe. There was a failed liberal big government program called the “Marshal plan” which rebuilt Europe after WW2. Instead of vacationing in Europe, go to some third world country recovering from a war.
The liberals tried to get us into WW2 before Hitler declared war on us. To simulate a world where the nazis took over, research your family tree to see if you can prove you are 100% Aryan through several generations. If not, sell yourself into slavery or commit suicide.
Rural electrification was a failed liberal program. Stick to private, 100% deregulated electricity - which of course would not build lines into the country (too unprofitable) unless you pay an arm and a leg.
We supported prohibition, lots of liberals did not. Never drink a beer or a glass of wine, unless it’s moonshined, and likely to make you go blind, and donate to your local organized crime lord to simulate the good old days of Al Capone.
Doctors are trained in liberal universities and overseen by the evil big government. Stick with quack doctors instead. If something he prescribes turns out to be something useless or poisonous, see another doctor. If the cough syrup you give your children turns out to have heroin as it‘s secret ingredient, (like it did in the good old days before that Socialist Teddy Roosevelt) buy another brand of heroin.
Even if your workplace is union-free, it is still effected by the threat of unions forming, or of people quitting to work in union jobs! To compensate for this horrible state of affairs, never wear goggles, gloves, or follow safety procedures, sniff dangerous fumes, work overtime, and donate most of your money back to the boss.
If you accidentally find yourself considering unionization, get yourself fired and blacklisted, or just have yourself lynched.
Never, ever go to a national park, or even look at pictures of a national park. Instead, take a vacation at an open-pit strip mine, or a clear-cut area which is turning into a desert wasteland, which is the proper use for national parkland.
The liberals wanted peace treaties with the Natives instead of just genociding them. To compensate for this liberal failure, declare war on any Native you see.
Don’t work in any tariff-protected job. If you buy something protected by tariff, pay extra. Don’t work in any industrial or high tech job - stick only to jobs that would work in the slave-powered cash crop economy of the Confederate States of America (or just move to a third world country).
Those damn Yankees hated state’s rights and opposed slavery. If you’re black, find the closest white person and sign a contract as his slave. If he doesn’t want you, simulate the good old days of the confederacy by chaining yourself to a crowded boat for a few months, whipping yourself, splitting up your family, and having people force you to “breed” with people you’ve never met. If you’re old or maimed enough to be unprofitable, commit suicide.
Lots of conservatives like civil-war reenactments. Next time, don’t just imagine you’re tearing apart your nation and killing your countrymen - use live ammo!
If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, get out of America. That’s what our conservative grand-daddies wanted, and what those permissive liberals fought against.
Send money to the Queen of England. The American revolution was a typically failed liberal movement, filled with feminazi class-warriors like Tomas Paine. Don’t visit or do business with countries who have a democracy inspired by those liberals, stick with third world dictatorships.
Respect authority, the flag, nationalism, and so on by randomly declaring war on some other group every now and them. We have to erase the legacy of the socialist UN and its peaceniks, and move back to the good old days of endless wars caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders and so on. The Geneva convention was made by liberal idealists, so use all the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons you want. If you can’t get your war on, simulate it by choosing at random family members to be killed or raped, and by occasionally destroying your own property, to simulate pillaging.
The god hating liberals stopped moral, god-fearing folk from having the freedom to do inquisitions. Make the world more god-fearing by choosing a religion at random (Like, say, the god of the !Kung Bushmen) and having yourself tortured in its name.
Be a good god-fearing Christian fundamentalist, and have yourself stoned to death if you ever broke any of the hundreds and laws and commandments and much in the old testament. For example, if someone rapes you, tell him you won’t call the police as long as he marries you. You’ll get some ideas here: http://www.landoverbaptist.com
We can go even further back into the good old days! Be a good Ra-fearing ancient Egyptian! Find someone at random, announce that he is your king and god, then get to work slaving away to build a pyramid for him.
Or, reverse liberalism even further, moving deeper into the even gooder, older days of prehistory, and become a human sacrifice. I know it’s probably difficult to eat your own heart, but I bet you could manage at lease one bite before you lose consciousness.
Now, (assuming any of you are still alive, let alone literate) isn’t it better living without liberals?
Every true conservative knows that liberals and big government are useless, and in fact destructive. Therefore, the obvious way to a better life is to have an entire culture and economy that functions, on its own, without touching anything contaminated by liberals and government.
Some republicans might get weak at the knees at some of my suggestions, but just tell them they’re hypocrites to say they oppose liberals yet deal with them all the time.
So, let’s get started right now!
First, stop paying your taxes, obviously. Lots of rich republicans and corporations already don’t, so you can skip this paragraph.
Secondly, if you’re not a land-owning white male, don’t vote. Liberals, class-warriors, feminazis and so on expanded voting, and obviously those people don’t know what’s best for non-whites and women! If a non-white or female tells you to vote republican, tell them they’re hypocrites and a traitor to the conservative cause.
Now, unplug your internet. It’s a failure because it was funded by the government, as suggested by Al Gore. Don’t use any satellite communications, those are contaminated with government failure, and don’t ever listen to a weather report, because those come from government weather satellites.
Don’t ever call the police or fire department, those are government, ie failed liberal programs. We’re all gun owners, and whoever heard of a crime involving guns? Just make sure you’re good at haggling once the private fire department comes!
You can fly a plane, but don’t use failed big government air traffic control, or airport security, which was federalized after 9/11, despite our opposition. We don’t really need them anyway because there’s no gun control on our planes - anyone can bring on bombs, it says that in the second amendment, read it for yourself. Oh, and we can’t have any of that failed program, “air marshals”. If terrorists highjack our plane, hire mercenaries with your own money, because the pentagon is a typical big-government failed program, and Howard Dean supported war on Afghanistan.
Don’t travel on public roads. We’ll make our own, and have toll booths. If one mile has no driving regulations, and the next mile has different lanes for blacks and whites, let them, they have a right to their private property.
Don’t use sewers or water pipes. Don’t buy bottled water, that’s just government tap water in a private bottle. Instead, drink from the same lake you dump sewage in. Don’t touch electrical grids. The recent power outage was caused by Ohio’s deregulated system, which is proof we need a totally deregulated, privatized system everywhere. If the electric monopoly demands you pay for your electricity by letting the boss screw your daughter, well, they have a right to their private property.
Don’t use that failed socialist program, the judicial system. We can all hire our own judges and juries, or maybe just use the tried, tested and true system of trial by fire, like we did in the good old days. It was good enough for my ancestors, so it’s good enough for me!
Don’t touch big-government Bolshevik welfare schemes like the US Patent Office. Either hire Enron to remember who invented what, or just declare war on someone if they steal your invention.
Avoid the big government tyranny of land records and enforcement of property and contract rights. If someone disagrees with you over who owns what, just shoot him!
Don’t ever look at labeling when you shop. The socialists insisted on those. Carry your own scales. If a republican store messes with their scales or lies on their labeling (or doesn’t label at all) there’s probably another store within a few miles. If you die from tainted meat, well, the maker will go out of business. If you make tainted meat, you’ll run out of customers, once they’re all dead. Obviously that system worked pretty well before food testing!
Obviously, don’t ever join a Union. If your boss rapes you, either find another boss you rapes you less often, or just stick with the age-old tactic of sabotage.
Don’t go anywhere near that horrible, work-ethic destroying US dollar! Either use the gold standard, or just barter, two cows for a wife, or whatever. Enron could print perfectly good money, and we conservatives know lots about currency - just look at how well the economy of the Confederate States of America worked!
Tree-huggers stopped open air nuclear testing and have all sorts of nonsense regulations about burying nuclear waste and so on. These tree huggers have only made the environment worse! Simulate a better environment by eating carcinogens and getting cancer to simulate radiation.
Obviously, don’t accept farm subsidies, and when you buy food, pay extra to cover the cost, because the farm subsidies artificially lower prices.
Send your kids to work in a coal mine, as was done before the evil liberals replaced child labor with public education. You don’t want them going soft in the permissive liberal society. Then force them to join the army, whether they want to or not, because the liberals got rid of the draft. And because of the peaceniks, there’s not enough wars - you can make up for this by throwing a frag grenade into your kid’s barracks every now and them.
Don’t have anything to do with the evil tyranny of the CFC ban. Until we’ve managed to destroy the ozone layer (canceling out the destructive events of this socialist policy ) we can eat carcinogens to give ourselves skin cancer and burn our skin to simulate the sunburns that we’ll have the freedom to enjoy once the ozone layer is gone.
Liberals don’t like gay bashing, and everyone knows liberal ideas lead to failure. If you see anyone wearing something, talking, or walking in a way that might possibly look “gay”, beat him up or lynch him. If you look gay, punch yourself or commit suicide.
Liberals are delaying climate change. To compensate for this failed policy, move to a desert, swamp, or somewhere under several feet of ocean.
Tree-huggers are destroying America with their obsession with clean air and water. Compensate for this by not flushing your toilet (sewers are a socialist program anyway) and drinking from there. Take a few good breaths from your car muffler and pour acid into your fish tank and swimming pool to further reduce the effects of liberal tyranny.
The permissive, evil, baby-killing liberals have stopped back-alley abortions. If you’re a woman, mutilate yourself with a coat hanger to recreate the moral, god-fearing good old days.
The liberal whine-fest has not improved things for blacks one bit. If you see a black boy look at a black girl, lynch him. Firebomb a few little black girls in a church, and blacks will finally realize how much better off they are without the whining liberals.
Of course, you can also move to a third-world, right-wing dictatorship, the likes of which we conservatives covertly, and sometimes overtly created throughout the world (in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia) - and the type that liberals hate so much. (Sadly, many of these dictatorships have fallen into democracy, but you can still move to the middle east, a god-fearing land).
Obviously, don’t use Medicare, and don’t buy drugs from Canada!
Public transportation is evil - if one Bus driver wants to be paid with oral sex, wait for the next bus. And make sure you always sit only in one section - because the liberal desegregation movement was a typical liberal failure. If you accidentally drink from the wrong drinking fountain, and so on, beat yourself or commit suicide.
God-hating liberal feminazis created and legalized birth control, which has ruined our nation. Compensate for this by adopting 12 kids, and then moving to a no-birth-control overcrowded slum in the third world.
If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, send the money back. If you were educated in a socialist, ivory-tower intellectual university, or evil public education, there are various chemicals you can drink that destroy memory.
Don’t buy anything from Europe, obviously. Also don’t sell anything to Europe, and send back anything you have from Europe. There was a failed liberal big government program called the “Marshal plan” which rebuilt Europe after WW2. Instead of vacationing in Europe, go to some third world country recovering from a war.
The liberals tried to get us into WW2 before Hitler declared war on us. To simulate a world where the nazis took over, research your family tree to see if you can prove you are 100% Aryan through several generations. If not, sell yourself into slavery or commit suicide.
Rural electrification was a failed liberal program. Stick to private, 100% deregulated electricity - which of course would not build lines into the country (too unprofitable) unless you pay an arm and a leg.
We supported prohibition, lots of liberals did not. Never drink a beer or a glass of wine, unless it’s moonshined, and likely to make you go blind, and donate to your local organized crime lord to simulate the good old days of Al Capone.
Doctors are trained in liberal universities and overseen by the evil big government. Stick with quack doctors instead. If something he prescribes turns out to be something useless or poisonous, see another doctor. If the cough syrup you give your children turns out to have heroin as it‘s secret ingredient, (like it did in the good old days before that Socialist Teddy Roosevelt) buy another brand of heroin.
Even if your workplace is union-free, it is still effected by the threat of unions forming, or of people quitting to work in union jobs! To compensate for this horrible state of affairs, never wear goggles, gloves, or follow safety procedures, sniff dangerous fumes, work overtime, and donate most of your money back to the boss.
If you accidentally find yourself considering unionization, get yourself fired and blacklisted, or just have yourself lynched.
Never, ever go to a national park, or even look at pictures of a national park. Instead, take a vacation at an open-pit strip mine, or a clear-cut area which is turning into a desert wasteland, which is the proper use for national parkland.
The liberals wanted peace treaties with the Natives instead of just genociding them. To compensate for this liberal failure, declare war on any Native you see.
Don’t work in any tariff-protected job. If you buy something protected by tariff, pay extra. Don’t work in any industrial or high tech job - stick only to jobs that would work in the slave-powered cash crop economy of the Confederate States of America (or just move to a third world country).
Those damn Yankees hated state’s rights and opposed slavery. If you’re black, find the closest white person and sign a contract as his slave. If he doesn’t want you, simulate the good old days of the confederacy by chaining yourself to a crowded boat for a few months, whipping yourself, splitting up your family, and having people force you to “breed” with people you’ve never met. If you’re old or maimed enough to be unprofitable, commit suicide.
Lots of conservatives like civil-war reenactments. Next time, don’t just imagine you’re tearing apart your nation and killing your countrymen - use live ammo!
If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, get out of America. That’s what our conservative grand-daddies wanted, and what those permissive liberals fought against.
Send money to the Queen of England. The American revolution was a typically failed liberal movement, filled with feminazi class-warriors like Tomas Paine. Don’t visit or do business with countries who have a democracy inspired by those liberals, stick with third world dictatorships.
Respect authority, the flag, nationalism, and so on by randomly declaring war on some other group every now and them. We have to erase the legacy of the socialist UN and its peaceniks, and move back to the good old days of endless wars caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders and so on. The Geneva convention was made by liberal idealists, so use all the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons you want. If you can’t get your war on, simulate it by choosing at random family members to be killed or raped, and by occasionally destroying your own property, to simulate pillaging.
The god hating liberals stopped moral, god-fearing folk from having the freedom to do inquisitions. Make the world more god-fearing by choosing a religion at random (Like, say, the god of the !Kung Bushmen) and having yourself tortured in its name.
Be a good god-fearing Christian fundamentalist, and have yourself stoned to death if you ever broke any of the hundreds and laws and commandments and much in the old testament. For example, if someone rapes you, tell him you won’t call the police as long as he marries you. You’ll get some ideas here: http://www.landoverbaptist.com
We can go even further back into the good old days! Be a good Ra-fearing ancient Egyptian! Find someone at random, announce that he is your king and god, then get to work slaving away to build a pyramid for him.
Or, reverse liberalism even further, moving deeper into the even gooder, older days of prehistory, and become a human sacrifice. I know it’s probably difficult to eat your own heart, but I bet you could manage at lease one bite before you lose consciousness.
Now, (assuming any of you are still alive, let alone literate) isn’t it better living without liberals?
An upcoming repig publication will be called “Shut up and sing” and it’s a collection of smear attacks on liberal celebrities. As for a book slamming Ahnold Schnikelgruber, (Shut up and pretend to kill people) I have not gotten word.
Every noticed how liberals talk factually about minute details of policy, trying to achieve perfection, while all conservatives can do is viciously attack their fellow Americans, in hopes of terrorizing them into silence?
Do you think it’s because their policies aren’t very good?
This, by the way, is where their “liberal media” lie comes from. According to them, if a singer occasionally mentions having the same political opinions as the majority of Americans, or a poll finds that journalists vote exactly the same as the “liberal bias” American population, that’s somehow brainwashing. Of course, journalists are “edited” (censored) by republican editors, corporations, and advertisers, which means that “liberal bias” claims basically boil down to “the janitors have a liberal bias, so that means you’re all brainwashed.”
So basically, the way to tell if the news has a liberal bias, is to see if it spends 24/7 complaining about “liberal bias”. If it doesn’t, then according to the party that lost the election, it’s biased.
Every noticed how liberals talk factually about minute details of policy, trying to achieve perfection, while all conservatives can do is viciously attack their fellow Americans, in hopes of terrorizing them into silence?
Do you think it’s because their policies aren’t very good?
This, by the way, is where their “liberal media” lie comes from. According to them, if a singer occasionally mentions having the same political opinions as the majority of Americans, or a poll finds that journalists vote exactly the same as the “liberal bias” American population, that’s somehow brainwashing. Of course, journalists are “edited” (censored) by republican editors, corporations, and advertisers, which means that “liberal bias” claims basically boil down to “the janitors have a liberal bias, so that means you’re all brainwashed.”
So basically, the way to tell if the news has a liberal bias, is to see if it spends 24/7 complaining about “liberal bias”. If it doesn’t, then according to the party that lost the election, it’s biased.
I remember, one time so very long ago, ignorance and lies were considered a bad thing. If you were an ignoramus or a liar, you had to be changed. But then all the ignoramuses and liars got together and decided that their knee-jerks and lies could be declared a “political philosophy” or even a “religion”. Suddenly, miraculously, educate made one “biased” against ignorance and lies. Knowledge and truth had to compete equally with ignorance and lies. To correct an error became an act of censorship, to speak the truth an act of bigotry.
Thus, I hearby present you with a lifetime supply of editorial content. Whenever you need to read an op-ed, just read this:
Editorial: I’m right, everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Why should everyone else shut up? Thank you for asking, now SHUT UP! First of all, there’s the undeniable fact that I’m right and everyone else is wrong.
Notice how whenever I say something, I say it LOUDLY, and s l o w l y and one hundred percent sure of myself. Notice how I don’t have the slightest concept of what doubt is. Notice how I know there is nothing left for me to learn. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how I say the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. Notice how my allies say exactly the same thing, and that they say it over and over and over and over and over and over. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how everybody else drones on with a blur of facts and arguments and details that don’t make good TV viewing. Notice how I simply attack the messenger with irrelevant though entreatingly vicious smears. Over and over and over and over and over and over. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how everyone else goes to “schools” and reads “books”. But they don’t talk LOUDLY and s l o w l y and one hundred percent sure of themselves, do they? That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice that I have a flag in my hand. See how I’m waving it all the time? That means I’m right and you’re wrong, so SHUT UP! That means that only I am patriotic and everyone else hates America. Obviously only someone who is always one hundred percent correct would know how to wave a flag.
I have a book that’s thousands of years and among its thousands of pages is the line: “Thou shalt shutupeth!” That means that I’m moral and everyone else is immoral, so everybody SHUT UP!
Thus, I hearby present you with a lifetime supply of editorial content. Whenever you need to read an op-ed, just read this:
Editorial: I’m right, everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Why should everyone else shut up? Thank you for asking, now SHUT UP! First of all, there’s the undeniable fact that I’m right and everyone else is wrong.
Notice how whenever I say something, I say it LOUDLY, and s l o w l y and one hundred percent sure of myself. Notice how I don’t have the slightest concept of what doubt is. Notice how I know there is nothing left for me to learn. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how I say the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. Notice how my allies say exactly the same thing, and that they say it over and over and over and over and over and over. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how everybody else drones on with a blur of facts and arguments and details that don’t make good TV viewing. Notice how I simply attack the messenger with irrelevant though entreatingly vicious smears. Over and over and over and over and over and over. That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice how everyone else goes to “schools” and reads “books”. But they don’t talk LOUDLY and s l o w l y and one hundred percent sure of themselves, do they? That means I’m right and everyone else is wrong, so everybody SHUT UP!
Notice that I have a flag in my hand. See how I’m waving it all the time? That means I’m right and you’re wrong, so SHUT UP! That means that only I am patriotic and everyone else hates America. Obviously only someone who is always one hundred percent correct would know how to wave a flag.
I have a book that’s thousands of years and among its thousands of pages is the line: “Thou shalt shutupeth!” That means that I’m moral and everyone else is immoral, so everybody SHUT UP!
I consider fascism a BAD thing
I was just thinking about the Italian president “Mussulini very killed anyone” and realized: Mussulini is probably more popular today than any time he actually lived. Things are probably further to the right under “conservatives” than under governments that proudly called themselves “fascist”.
You don’t want to vote? Fine, so maybe you won’t mind being put in front of their fireing squad. But could you at least worry about your mother, who is going to receive a bill charging her for the bullet?
I was just thinking about the Italian president “Mussulini very killed anyone” and realized: Mussulini is probably more popular today than any time he actually lived. Things are probably further to the right under “conservatives” than under governments that proudly called themselves “fascist”.
You don’t want to vote? Fine, so maybe you won’t mind being put in front of their fireing squad. But could you at least worry about your mother, who is going to receive a bill charging her for the bullet?
I was just thinking about the Italian president “Mussulini very killed anyone” and realized: Mussulini is probably more popular today than any time he actually lived. Things are probably further to the right under “conservatives” than under governments that proudly called themselves “fascist”.
You don’t want to vote? Fine, so maybe you won’t mind being put in front of their fireing squad. But could you at least worry about your mother, who is going to receive a bill charging her for the bullet?
You don’t want to vote? Fine, so maybe you won’t mind being put in front of their fireing squad. But could you at least worry about your mother, who is going to receive a bill charging her for the bullet?
Call the Guiness Book of World Records:
INTERNATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I am the first president in US history to order a military occupation of a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
* I withdrew from or abrogated more international treaties than any president in US history.
* I refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court.
* I refuse to allow international or Red Cross access to US prisoners of war; I no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
* I took the world's sympathy after 9-11 and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world, possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US history.
* I am the first US president to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the greatest threat to world peace and stability.
* I am the first US president to have the people of South Korea feel more threatened by the US than by their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
* I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from its Human Rights Commission.
* I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from its Elections Monitoring Board.
ECONOMIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I spent the U.S. surplus and shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history.
* I set the all-time record for biggest annual spending increases, more than any other president in US history.
* I set a record for the most private bankruptcies in any 12-month period.
* I set the all-time record for the most foreclosures in any 12-month period.
* I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any country in the history of the world.
* After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.
* In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
* I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any president in US history.
* I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
* I cut health care benefits for war veterans.
PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
* I am the first US president to run and hide when the country came under attack (and then lied, saying Air Force 1 was threatened).
* I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine. My driving and arrest record (including a rumored cocaine conviction) in Texas has been erased and is not available. I refuse to take drug tests or to answer any questions about drug use.
* I was AWOL from the National Guard for a year during time of war. For anyone else, that would have triggered automatic active service and likely duty in Vietnam; it did not for me. In fact, I sought, and received, early discharge.
* All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed and unavailable for public view.
* All minutes of meetings of any public corporation of which I was a director are sealed and unavailable for public view.
* All records or minutes from meetings I or my Vice President attended regarding public energy policy are sealed and unavailable for public review.
POLITICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by any president in US history.
* I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
* I set the all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated USA law by not selling their investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
* I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
* I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest against me -- 15 million, the most against any person in the history of mankind.
* I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.
* Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her).
* I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
* The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history: Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation.
* I spend more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
INTERNATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I am the first president in US history to order a military occupation of a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
* I withdrew from or abrogated more international treaties than any president in US history.
* I refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court.
* I refuse to allow international or Red Cross access to US prisoners of war; I no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
* I took the world's sympathy after 9-11 and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world, possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US history.
* I am the first US president to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the greatest threat to world peace and stability.
* I am the first US president to have the people of South Korea feel more threatened by the US than by their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
* I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from its Human Rights Commission.
* I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from its Elections Monitoring Board.
ECONOMIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I spent the U.S. surplus and shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history.
* I set the all-time record for biggest annual spending increases, more than any other president in US history.
* I set a record for the most private bankruptcies in any 12-month period.
* I set the all-time record for the most foreclosures in any 12-month period.
* I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any country in the history of the world.
* After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.
* In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
* I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any president in US history.
* I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
* I cut health care benefits for war veterans.
PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
* I am the first US president to run and hide when the country came under attack (and then lied, saying Air Force 1 was threatened).
* I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine. My driving and arrest record (including a rumored cocaine conviction) in Texas has been erased and is not available. I refuse to take drug tests or to answer any questions about drug use.
* I was AWOL from the National Guard for a year during time of war. For anyone else, that would have triggered automatic active service and likely duty in Vietnam; it did not for me. In fact, I sought, and received, early discharge.
* All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed and unavailable for public view.
* All minutes of meetings of any public corporation of which I was a director are sealed and unavailable for public view.
* All records or minutes from meetings I or my Vice President attended regarding public energy policy are sealed and unavailable for public review.
POLITICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
* I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by any president in US history.
* I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
* I set the all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated USA law by not selling their investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
* I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
* I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest against me -- 15 million, the most against any person in the history of mankind.
* I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.
* Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her).
* I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
* The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history: Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation.
* I spend more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
The price of a Bush photo-op
They used to use black slaves to pick cotton, now they use them a photo-op slaves.
Karl Rove figured that Bush needed a photo-op with black people. So, they arrested hundreds of black people, shut down a city full of black people, keeping hungry black people from getting to work, buzzing jets over their houses so they couldn't sleep, dragging them out of their homes in the middle of night - and didn't even buy so much as a postcard:
***
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 12:44 PM
Subject: Bush's visit to Senegal
Dearest friends,
As you probably know, this week George Bush is visiting Africa. Starting with Senegal, he arrived this morning at 7.20 PM and left at 1.30 PM...
Let me share with you what we have been through since last week.
1. Arrests: more than 1,500 persons have been arrested and put in jail between Thursday and Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that
the Big Man is gone.
2. The US Army's planes flying day and night over Dakar. The noise they make is so loud that one hardly sleeps at night.
3. About 700 security people from the US for Bush's security in Senegal, with their dogs, and their cars. Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come near the US president.
4. All trees in places where Bush will pass have been cut. Some of them have more than 100 years.
5. All roads going down town (where hospitals, businesses, schools are located) were closed from Monday night to Tuesday at 3 PM. This means that we could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people were also obliged to stay at home.
6. National exams for high schools that started on Monday are postponed until Wednesday.
Bush's visit to the Goree Island is another story. As you may know Goree is a small Island facing Dakar where from the 15th to the 19th century, the African slaves to be shipped to america were parked in special houses called slave houses. One of these houses has become a Museum to remind humanity about this dark period and has been visited by kings, queens, presidents. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson Mandela, the Pope, and many other distinguished guests or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the islanders.
But for "security reasons" this time, the local population was chased out of their houses from 5 to 12 AM. They were forced by the American security to leave their houses and leaves everything open, including their wardrobes to be searched by special dogs brought from the US.
The ferry that links the island to Dakar was stopped and offices and businesses closed for the day.
According to an economist who was interviewed by a private radio, Senegal that is a very poor country has lost huge amount of money in this visit, because workers have been prevented from walking out of their homes.
In addition to us being prevented to go out, other humiliating things happened also. Not only Bush did not want to be with Senegalese he also did not want to use our things. He brought his own armchairs, and of course his own cars, and meals and drinks. He came with his own journalists and ours were forbidden inside the airport and in places he was visiting.
Our president was not allowed to make a speech. Only Bush spoke when he was in Goree. He spoke about slavery. It seems that he needs the vote
of the African American to be elected in the next elections, and wanted to please them. That's why he visited Goree.
Several protest marches against American politics have been organized yesterday and even when Bush was here, but we think he does not care.
We have the feeling that everything has been done to convince us that we are nothing, and that America can behave the way it wants, everywhere, even in our country.
Believe me friends, it is a terrible feeling. But according to a Ugandan friend of mine, I should not complain because in Uganda, one of the country he is going to visit, Bush does not intend to go out of the airport. He will receive the Ugandan President in the airport lounge.
Nevertheless, I think I am lucky, because I have such wonderful American friends. But there are now thousands of Senegalese who believe that for all Americans the world is their territory.
Love to you all
Codou
They used to use black slaves to pick cotton, now they use them a photo-op slaves.
Karl Rove figured that Bush needed a photo-op with black people. So, they arrested hundreds of black people, shut down a city full of black people, keeping hungry black people from getting to work, buzzing jets over their houses so they couldn't sleep, dragging them out of their homes in the middle of night - and didn't even buy so much as a postcard:
***
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 12:44 PM
Subject: Bush's visit to Senegal
Dearest friends,
As you probably know, this week George Bush is visiting Africa. Starting with Senegal, he arrived this morning at 7.20 PM and left at 1.30 PM...
Let me share with you what we have been through since last week.
1. Arrests: more than 1,500 persons have been arrested and put in jail between Thursday and Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that
the Big Man is gone.
2. The US Army's planes flying day and night over Dakar. The noise they make is so loud that one hardly sleeps at night.
3. About 700 security people from the US for Bush's security in Senegal, with their dogs, and their cars. Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come near the US president.
4. All trees in places where Bush will pass have been cut. Some of them have more than 100 years.
5. All roads going down town (where hospitals, businesses, schools are located) were closed from Monday night to Tuesday at 3 PM. This means that we could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people were also obliged to stay at home.
6. National exams for high schools that started on Monday are postponed until Wednesday.
Bush's visit to the Goree Island is another story. As you may know Goree is a small Island facing Dakar where from the 15th to the 19th century, the African slaves to be shipped to america were parked in special houses called slave houses. One of these houses has become a Museum to remind humanity about this dark period and has been visited by kings, queens, presidents. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson Mandela, the Pope, and many other distinguished guests or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the islanders.
But for "security reasons" this time, the local population was chased out of their houses from 5 to 12 AM. They were forced by the American security to leave their houses and leaves everything open, including their wardrobes to be searched by special dogs brought from the US.
The ferry that links the island to Dakar was stopped and offices and businesses closed for the day.
According to an economist who was interviewed by a private radio, Senegal that is a very poor country has lost huge amount of money in this visit, because workers have been prevented from walking out of their homes.
In addition to us being prevented to go out, other humiliating things happened also. Not only Bush did not want to be with Senegalese he also did not want to use our things. He brought his own armchairs, and of course his own cars, and meals and drinks. He came with his own journalists and ours were forbidden inside the airport and in places he was visiting.
Our president was not allowed to make a speech. Only Bush spoke when he was in Goree. He spoke about slavery. It seems that he needs the vote
of the African American to be elected in the next elections, and wanted to please them. That's why he visited Goree.
Several protest marches against American politics have been organized yesterday and even when Bush was here, but we think he does not care.
We have the feeling that everything has been done to convince us that we are nothing, and that America can behave the way it wants, everywhere, even in our country.
Believe me friends, it is a terrible feeling. But according to a Ugandan friend of mine, I should not complain because in Uganda, one of the country he is going to visit, Bush does not intend to go out of the airport. He will receive the Ugandan President in the airport lounge.
Nevertheless, I think I am lucky, because I have such wonderful American friends. But there are now thousands of Senegalese who believe that for all Americans the world is their territory.
Love to you all
Codou
"…in the spring of 2002, key weapons in the war against terror — such as the commandos, the drones and the high-tech surveillance planes — were rotated out of Afghanistan. Now experts tell NBC there was a clear tradeoff as the United States let up on al-Qaida to pursue regime change in Iraq.
A former national security official in the Bush administration tells NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers the White House was warned that the buildup against Saddam might provide a respite for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. “There were decisions made,” says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, “to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.”
Leverett, a former senior CIA analyst, talks with the professorial precision of an academic. “We see today,” he says, “that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/945588.asp?0cv=CA01#BODY
" NBC News has learned that in one still-classified incident in Yemen, commanders wanted to engage what sources call a “viable mission against an al-Qaida target.” After all, in the past they had used the missiles on the remotely piloted drones to strike at terrorists. But in this case, because of the Iraq war, there was not a Predator they could use. The al-Qaida target got away."
A former national security official in the Bush administration tells NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers the White House was warned that the buildup against Saddam might provide a respite for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. “There were decisions made,” says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, “to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.”
Leverett, a former senior CIA analyst, talks with the professorial precision of an academic. “We see today,” he says, “that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/945588.asp?0cv=CA01#BODY
" NBC News has learned that in one still-classified incident in Yemen, commanders wanted to engage what sources call a “viable mission against an al-Qaida target.” After all, in the past they had used the missiles on the remotely piloted drones to strike at terrorists. But in this case, because of the Iraq war, there was not a Predator they could use. The al-Qaida target got away."
Clinton: blow job. Bush: no job
How does each administration compare on the economy?
Republicans:
Baby Bush: economy ruined, massive debt, no end in sight
Daddy Bush: Reccesion
Reagan: double-didget unemployment, massive debt
Nixon: Stagflation
Ike: Reccession
Hoover: Great depression
Democrats:
Clinton: recovery, unprecidented growth and prosperity
Carter: People WHERE better off than they were 4 years ago
Johnson: growth taken for granted, despite war costs
Kennedy: growth taken for granted
Truman: prosperity, survival of demobililization shocks, foundation laid for decades of reletive prosperity
Roosevelt: recovery from depression, astounding wartime production
If you're sick of recession, call the doctor!
How does each administration compare on the economy?
Republicans:
Baby Bush: economy ruined, massive debt, no end in sight
Daddy Bush: Reccesion
Reagan: double-didget unemployment, massive debt
Nixon: Stagflation
Ike: Reccession
Hoover: Great depression
Democrats:
Clinton: recovery, unprecidented growth and prosperity
Carter: People WHERE better off than they were 4 years ago
Johnson: growth taken for granted, despite war costs
Kennedy: growth taken for granted
Truman: prosperity, survival of demobililization shocks, foundation laid for decades of reletive prosperity
Roosevelt: recovery from depression, astounding wartime production
If you're sick of recession, call the doctor!
They never change:
Even in the depths of the great depression, the republicans continued their whining and class-warfare tactics of blaming the working poor and unemployed for the suffering caused by republican policy:
John Edgerton, in his presidential address to the National Association of Manufacturers (October 1930. "They [the unemployed workers] do not...practice the habits of thrift and conservation, or if they gambly away their savings in the stock market or elsewhere, is our economic system, or government, or industry to blame?"
"As it now stands, labor has reaped all the reward, and the new capital supplied is with little or no return." whined Barron's XIII (January 16, 1933)
Even in the depths of the great depression, the republicans continued their whining and class-warfare tactics of blaming the working poor and unemployed for the suffering caused by republican policy:
John Edgerton, in his presidential address to the National Association of Manufacturers (October 1930. "They [the unemployed workers] do not...practice the habits of thrift and conservation, or if they gambly away their savings in the stock market or elsewhere, is our economic system, or government, or industry to blame?"
"As it now stands, labor has reaped all the reward, and the new capital supplied is with little or no return." whined Barron's XIII (January 16, 1933)
A guest column: George W Betrayal
It's time for true republicans to stop the Bush Betrayal.
Karl Rove marketed Bush as a compassionate conservative. He vowed to "govern from the middle". He did a LOT of photo-ops with little black kids.
Instead he's been an autocratic, big spending, crony-coddling, soft-on-crime, military-quagmire-creating extremist, who puts ideology before security. And worse, when America suffers another attack due to his incompetence, he will demand MORE power.
But you know what's scariest? WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW FAR BUSH WANTS TO GO. He lied about being a compassionate conservative. He lied about governing from the middle. He went right, then he went further to the right, then further, and never, ever has he said what his policy is. We know he's willing to bankrupt America's government to get what he wants. We know Karl Rove is getting more and more ambitious when it comes to rigging elections. What will they destroy next? Who will they attack next? NOBODY KNOWS.
"fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." -American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983)
Imagine you're a young girl. Bush asks if he can hold your hand, and when you say "I don't know", he shoves his tounge down your throat. Then demands that you be tied to a bed - for your own safety. Will you let him?
George W Bolshevik
It should be pointed out when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was asked who he would vote for other than himself, he said, without pausing for a second, George W Bush. communists and anarchists are the same. Why would this be? Most far-left rank and file will say that Bush will "bring on the revolution" - that by swinging the political pendulum to the far right, it will cause an eventual swing to the extreme left. It sounds loony, until you realize that the master strategist Karl Rove has been giving a lot of support to the Green Party.
what's going on? The only answer is that someone is indeed trying to bring on a revolution, but no pendulum is involved.
Both of far left and the far right hate a healthy democracy. The sunshine of honest debate and compromise-seeking sends them scurrying right back under their little rocks. Both of them, knowingly or not, are "bringing on the revolution" together.
Sound like a far out consiracy theory? Well, look at dictatorships and see how they function. First and foremost, dictatorships need a boogeyman. Stalin used fear of reactionary and fascist plots to keep his people in line. Hitler used fear of communist plots to keep his people in line. Most of the time the two dictators did not conspire, but they did openly conspire in the destruction of Poland.
Now look at Bush and the Islamic extremists. The Bush Brownshirts censor radio and purge the media of questioning journalists. Why? The Islamic Extremists, of course. Now look at the middle east - in every recent election, the Islamic extremists have won. The Taliban have made a comback in Afganistan, and the once secular Iraq is now home to Islamic fanatics and terrorists. Why? They justify themselves as a defense against Bush! In Iran, a massice liberal protest movement was dismissed by the government as a Bush administration plot. It worked, and the movement faded away.
The important thing to emphasize is that there is no need for conspiracy. The extremist groups still assist each other even in their bitterest hate for each other. There could be plenty of reasons the Bush Administration has done so much stonewalling of the 9/11 investegation that the investegators have called it a coverup. There's no doubt that Bush hates the "evildoers". (What Cheney and Karl Rove think of them is anyone's guess.)
George W Brownshirt
Let's put ourselves in the mind of an extremist. We will call ourselves the Movement to Ban Carrots (MBC) in the Republic of Nationland.
We start our movement by holding up a sign and handing out flyers explaining the evils of carrotism. Things don't go so well. People cross the street to avoid us, and media show up only because it's a slow news day and they're hoping someone might get hurt. Dejected, we return home and watch the news - only to see that some other group, the Movement for Forcefeed Carrots, is handing out flyers (and one of them caused a papercut, making them newsworthy.)
Hm, we say, I think we have an idea. We know that rational debate among trusting, intelligent adults seeking compromise and moderation won't get an extremist movement anywhere. Instead, our M.B.C. needs a bitter, polarized, bile filled mud-slinging contest, in which everyone gets covered with so much mud that the only way to tell who is who is to listen to whoever shouts the loudest.
We show up at the headquarters of a major political party, the A party. "Aren't you those crazies who want to ban carrots?" they say.
"No," we say "we're here to stop the MFC. We're against forcefeeding carrots."
They're skeptical, but when they see the amount of money we raise, the amount of volunteering we do, and the fact the we have 100% turnout and vote a straight party ticket - as well as the fact that we've started a company that builds voting machines and checks voting lists - they start to see things out way.
We start a think tank called the Intellectual Institute, which makes up studies proving the evils of carrotism, and proving that the B party is in bed with the MFC, even though the MFC already have their own political party. The newspapers ignore us. So, we start a radio show and accuse the newspapers of being biased towards the MFC. "The newspapers want to shove carrots down your children's throats!" we shout.
We get a study in the newspaper, and though eventually some intellectual goes through our data and makes a 500-report listing the statistical fallacies we used, it isn't sexy enough for the news, though the paper might print a tiny retraction that nobody notices.
Pretty soon we have so much power that it's a prerequisite that all A party candidates be anti-carrot. (They prefer to call themselves "in favor of throats rights"). However, the voters are scared off, especially when out leading preacher declares "It's time for an agri-culture war." Party B wins the election.
We accuse carrot eaters of being sex-crazed maniacs. We make lots of accusations, and while none of them have any evidence, people eventually say "boy, I'm hearing a lot about carrot-eaters being perverts. Sure, nothing has been proven, but where there's smoke, there's fire, right?"
Now, we start investigating the sex lives of carrot-eaters. (Odds are at least one of the millions of carrot-eaters don't only do it missionary style with the lights out.) I know it sounds expensive, but don't worry, we'll use the taxpayers money. They probably would have wasted that money on carrots anyway. We'll use hundreds of FBI agents to dig around in carrot farms - don't worry if they're diverted from anti-terrorist duties, after all, odds are the terrorists are carrot-eaters so we can blame party B. We put the carrot-eaters under oath and interrogate them endlessly.
Finally, we find something. While asking Party B if their president tweaked the left nipple first, or second, he says, "dammit, I didn't tweak anything, now let me bomb those terrorists!"
"Aha!" We say. "You're just trying to divert attention by bombing those terrorists! You're playing Wag the Dog! And by the way, you lied about the nipple thing, so we can impeach you!"
In the next election, we declare that we're not anti-carrot anymore. We're just against forcefeeding carrots. We're into compassionate carrotism.
"Well," say the voters "We can choose between those nice moderate fellows, or those perverted liars in bed with the MFC who tried to distract us by bombing a bunch of innocent, fun-lovin' terrorists who never tweak nipples! I don't know who to vote for."
However, the movement to forcefeed carrots do. They vote for us.
It's not enough. The election is looking like a tie.
Remember that voting machine company and our voting-list checkers? Well, we found that 90% of redheads tend to eat a lot of carrots, so we've counted 30% them as felons, so they can't vote. When the vote is a tie, one of our reletives with a TV station declares us the winner, and the other stations follow our lead, for lack of anything closer to a story. Then we call our opponents sore losers, before the counting has even bean done. When colorblind people confuse the carrot lever with the turnip lever, we ridicule them. When the votes are counted, we mob their office and threaten to riot until they give up. We bring some black-power groups to intimidate redheads from speaking up.
When politicians speak up, we accuse them of playing politics, and they back down. When carrot farmers speak up, we accuse them of farming carrots, and they back down, murmering that they really didn't mean to farm carrots, murmer murmer.
Suddenly, a flamethrower-wielding terrorist - reportedly a carrot-eater - burns down the capitol. "Why god!" everyone says. "I didn't expect flamethrowers!" Party A approval ratings go sky high. A civil disobedience movement that planned to plant carrots on the Washington Mall is called off. There is no investegation of the flamethrower incident.
In troubled times like this, we must rally around the leader. We write a "Liberty Act" which provides anti-terror support - and also bans carrots. The opposition knows that if they try to oppose the bill, they'll be labelled anti-Nationland terrorists, so they trip over each other in being the first to sign the bill that bans carrots. Even mentioning carrots is considered unpatriotic. In fact, merely wearing orange T-shirts gets people fired, banned, or cast out of their families.
The Movement to Forcefeed Carrots is growing by leaps and bounds, fueled by carrot-starved people, but we don't care. Our movement is to ban carrots, not to give people free choice. After all, things are right where our MBC wants it to be: a bitter, divided, uncompromising, mud-slinging political culture, and a starving, anemic, breathless, limping democracy, ready to fall with just a push.
For the next century, the Republic of Nationland is a third-world country, with dictatorships overthrowing each other every few years. Sometimes we live in palaces, sometimes we get exiled to comfortable villas in Saudi Arabia. Sometimes we are death squads, sometimes we are terrorists. Sometimes people are forcefed carrots, and sometimes they can't eat carrots. It's all the same to them. The death squads and the terrorists shoot anyone who won't pay them, and anyone who pays one is shot by the other. All are shot for betraying Nationland. "Long live Nationland" they all yell as the firing squad shoots them. There's no difference. In troubled times like this, we must rally round the leader.
"Long live Nationland!" *BANG* *BANG*
After a century of horror, a new movement is born. This movement has nothing to do with vegetables or hair colors. It goal is simply to bring back a polical culture of compromise, civility, and trust. A-icans, B-ocrats, all decent parties are united. Perhaps there won't even be political parties in the end - it will democracy the way the founding fathers intended.
What can we do?
One advantage the democrats have is third parties. Extremists on the left can join the Green Party, or various communist parties. But what happens to right-wing extremists?
Apperently, they take over the government.
Because of our tolerance of Bush-league neoconservatives in our party, these extremists have dragged the image of the Republican party through the dirt. Forming a third party is an option, but seems to me dishonrable. The Republican party is a CONSERVATIVE party, and should not be surrendered to fanatics who don't believe in a republic at all. Bush is the one who belongs in a third party.
I've seen a lot of Republicans supporting Howard Dean, the centrist candidate who is leading the Democratic primaries. This is good, but Bush is not the only extremist in the Republican party. Karl Rove has his tentacles all over the party, a mere change of figurehead will not do the job. The entire party is long overdue for a purge.
This leaves the only sensible option - volunteer, donate, and vote a straight ticket for the Democratic party until the extremists are so routed that we can finally reclaim our party.
It's time for true republicans to stop the Bush Betrayal.
Karl Rove marketed Bush as a compassionate conservative. He vowed to "govern from the middle". He did a LOT of photo-ops with little black kids.
Instead he's been an autocratic, big spending, crony-coddling, soft-on-crime, military-quagmire-creating extremist, who puts ideology before security. And worse, when America suffers another attack due to his incompetence, he will demand MORE power.
But you know what's scariest? WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW FAR BUSH WANTS TO GO. He lied about being a compassionate conservative. He lied about governing from the middle. He went right, then he went further to the right, then further, and never, ever has he said what his policy is. We know he's willing to bankrupt America's government to get what he wants. We know Karl Rove is getting more and more ambitious when it comes to rigging elections. What will they destroy next? Who will they attack next? NOBODY KNOWS.
"fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." -American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983)
Imagine you're a young girl. Bush asks if he can hold your hand, and when you say "I don't know", he shoves his tounge down your throat. Then demands that you be tied to a bed - for your own safety. Will you let him?
George W Bolshevik
It should be pointed out when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was asked who he would vote for other than himself, he said, without pausing for a second, George W Bush. communists and anarchists are the same. Why would this be? Most far-left rank and file will say that Bush will "bring on the revolution" - that by swinging the political pendulum to the far right, it will cause an eventual swing to the extreme left. It sounds loony, until you realize that the master strategist Karl Rove has been giving a lot of support to the Green Party.
what's going on? The only answer is that someone is indeed trying to bring on a revolution, but no pendulum is involved.
Both of far left and the far right hate a healthy democracy. The sunshine of honest debate and compromise-seeking sends them scurrying right back under their little rocks. Both of them, knowingly or not, are "bringing on the revolution" together.
Sound like a far out consiracy theory? Well, look at dictatorships and see how they function. First and foremost, dictatorships need a boogeyman. Stalin used fear of reactionary and fascist plots to keep his people in line. Hitler used fear of communist plots to keep his people in line. Most of the time the two dictators did not conspire, but they did openly conspire in the destruction of Poland.
Now look at Bush and the Islamic extremists. The Bush Brownshirts censor radio and purge the media of questioning journalists. Why? The Islamic Extremists, of course. Now look at the middle east - in every recent election, the Islamic extremists have won. The Taliban have made a comback in Afganistan, and the once secular Iraq is now home to Islamic fanatics and terrorists. Why? They justify themselves as a defense against Bush! In Iran, a massice liberal protest movement was dismissed by the government as a Bush administration plot. It worked, and the movement faded away.
The important thing to emphasize is that there is no need for conspiracy. The extremist groups still assist each other even in their bitterest hate for each other. There could be plenty of reasons the Bush Administration has done so much stonewalling of the 9/11 investegation that the investegators have called it a coverup. There's no doubt that Bush hates the "evildoers". (What Cheney and Karl Rove think of them is anyone's guess.)
George W Brownshirt
Let's put ourselves in the mind of an extremist. We will call ourselves the Movement to Ban Carrots (MBC) in the Republic of Nationland.
We start our movement by holding up a sign and handing out flyers explaining the evils of carrotism. Things don't go so well. People cross the street to avoid us, and media show up only because it's a slow news day and they're hoping someone might get hurt. Dejected, we return home and watch the news - only to see that some other group, the Movement for Forcefeed Carrots, is handing out flyers (and one of them caused a papercut, making them newsworthy.)
Hm, we say, I think we have an idea. We know that rational debate among trusting, intelligent adults seeking compromise and moderation won't get an extremist movement anywhere. Instead, our M.B.C. needs a bitter, polarized, bile filled mud-slinging contest, in which everyone gets covered with so much mud that the only way to tell who is who is to listen to whoever shouts the loudest.
We show up at the headquarters of a major political party, the A party. "Aren't you those crazies who want to ban carrots?" they say.
"No," we say "we're here to stop the MFC. We're against forcefeeding carrots."
They're skeptical, but when they see the amount of money we raise, the amount of volunteering we do, and the fact the we have 100% turnout and vote a straight party ticket - as well as the fact that we've started a company that builds voting machines and checks voting lists - they start to see things out way.
We start a think tank called the Intellectual Institute, which makes up studies proving the evils of carrotism, and proving that the B party is in bed with the MFC, even though the MFC already have their own political party. The newspapers ignore us. So, we start a radio show and accuse the newspapers of being biased towards the MFC. "The newspapers want to shove carrots down your children's throats!" we shout.
We get a study in the newspaper, and though eventually some intellectual goes through our data and makes a 500-report listing the statistical fallacies we used, it isn't sexy enough for the news, though the paper might print a tiny retraction that nobody notices.
Pretty soon we have so much power that it's a prerequisite that all A party candidates be anti-carrot. (They prefer to call themselves "in favor of throats rights"). However, the voters are scared off, especially when out leading preacher declares "It's time for an agri-culture war." Party B wins the election.
We accuse carrot eaters of being sex-crazed maniacs. We make lots of accusations, and while none of them have any evidence, people eventually say "boy, I'm hearing a lot about carrot-eaters being perverts. Sure, nothing has been proven, but where there's smoke, there's fire, right?"
Now, we start investigating the sex lives of carrot-eaters. (Odds are at least one of the millions of carrot-eaters don't only do it missionary style with the lights out.) I know it sounds expensive, but don't worry, we'll use the taxpayers money. They probably would have wasted that money on carrots anyway. We'll use hundreds of FBI agents to dig around in carrot farms - don't worry if they're diverted from anti-terrorist duties, after all, odds are the terrorists are carrot-eaters so we can blame party B. We put the carrot-eaters under oath and interrogate them endlessly.
Finally, we find something. While asking Party B if their president tweaked the left nipple first, or second, he says, "dammit, I didn't tweak anything, now let me bomb those terrorists!"
"Aha!" We say. "You're just trying to divert attention by bombing those terrorists! You're playing Wag the Dog! And by the way, you lied about the nipple thing, so we can impeach you!"
In the next election, we declare that we're not anti-carrot anymore. We're just against forcefeeding carrots. We're into compassionate carrotism.
"Well," say the voters "We can choose between those nice moderate fellows, or those perverted liars in bed with the MFC who tried to distract us by bombing a bunch of innocent, fun-lovin' terrorists who never tweak nipples! I don't know who to vote for."
However, the movement to forcefeed carrots do. They vote for us.
It's not enough. The election is looking like a tie.
Remember that voting machine company and our voting-list checkers? Well, we found that 90% of redheads tend to eat a lot of carrots, so we've counted 30% them as felons, so they can't vote. When the vote is a tie, one of our reletives with a TV station declares us the winner, and the other stations follow our lead, for lack of anything closer to a story. Then we call our opponents sore losers, before the counting has even bean done. When colorblind people confuse the carrot lever with the turnip lever, we ridicule them. When the votes are counted, we mob their office and threaten to riot until they give up. We bring some black-power groups to intimidate redheads from speaking up.
When politicians speak up, we accuse them of playing politics, and they back down. When carrot farmers speak up, we accuse them of farming carrots, and they back down, murmering that they really didn't mean to farm carrots, murmer murmer.
Suddenly, a flamethrower-wielding terrorist - reportedly a carrot-eater - burns down the capitol. "Why god!" everyone says. "I didn't expect flamethrowers!" Party A approval ratings go sky high. A civil disobedience movement that planned to plant carrots on the Washington Mall is called off. There is no investegation of the flamethrower incident.
In troubled times like this, we must rally around the leader. We write a "Liberty Act" which provides anti-terror support - and also bans carrots. The opposition knows that if they try to oppose the bill, they'll be labelled anti-Nationland terrorists, so they trip over each other in being the first to sign the bill that bans carrots. Even mentioning carrots is considered unpatriotic. In fact, merely wearing orange T-shirts gets people fired, banned, or cast out of their families.
The Movement to Forcefeed Carrots is growing by leaps and bounds, fueled by carrot-starved people, but we don't care. Our movement is to ban carrots, not to give people free choice. After all, things are right where our MBC wants it to be: a bitter, divided, uncompromising, mud-slinging political culture, and a starving, anemic, breathless, limping democracy, ready to fall with just a push.
For the next century, the Republic of Nationland is a third-world country, with dictatorships overthrowing each other every few years. Sometimes we live in palaces, sometimes we get exiled to comfortable villas in Saudi Arabia. Sometimes we are death squads, sometimes we are terrorists. Sometimes people are forcefed carrots, and sometimes they can't eat carrots. It's all the same to them. The death squads and the terrorists shoot anyone who won't pay them, and anyone who pays one is shot by the other. All are shot for betraying Nationland. "Long live Nationland" they all yell as the firing squad shoots them. There's no difference. In troubled times like this, we must rally round the leader.
"Long live Nationland!" *BANG* *BANG*
After a century of horror, a new movement is born. This movement has nothing to do with vegetables or hair colors. It goal is simply to bring back a polical culture of compromise, civility, and trust. A-icans, B-ocrats, all decent parties are united. Perhaps there won't even be political parties in the end - it will democracy the way the founding fathers intended.
What can we do?
One advantage the democrats have is third parties. Extremists on the left can join the Green Party, or various communist parties. But what happens to right-wing extremists?
Apperently, they take over the government.
Because of our tolerance of Bush-league neoconservatives in our party, these extremists have dragged the image of the Republican party through the dirt. Forming a third party is an option, but seems to me dishonrable. The Republican party is a CONSERVATIVE party, and should not be surrendered to fanatics who don't believe in a republic at all. Bush is the one who belongs in a third party.
I've seen a lot of Republicans supporting Howard Dean, the centrist candidate who is leading the Democratic primaries. This is good, but Bush is not the only extremist in the Republican party. Karl Rove has his tentacles all over the party, a mere change of figurehead will not do the job. The entire party is long overdue for a purge.
This leaves the only sensible option - volunteer, donate, and vote a straight ticket for the Democratic party until the extremists are so routed that we can finally reclaim our party.
Why democrats act like republicans
But yourself in the shoes of a democratic politician: you need support. You need voters, volunteers, and donations.
You try to move left. But people on the left join third parties, choose not to vote, or don't even care. So what can you do?
You move right. Because you didn't get personal donations, you'll need corporate contributions.
Conservatives volunteer, donate, and have a near-flawless vote turnout. So you plug your nose and turn into a repubocrat.
Now say things change. People on the left say "Wow, in Sweden people more vote, and they haven't bombed anyone lately. Let's act more like
Swedish voters."
So, suddenly volunteers pour in, individual donations soar, and on election day masses of people vote for the first time - and vote a straight democratic ticket.
Now you don't need republicans and corporations, so you can dump them and do the job you came here to do.
***
Don't believe me? Fine. But you'll have to admit there's one difference between democrats and Bush:
With Democrats, you can at least protest. The future with Bush is not as certain:
***
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellctuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."
But yourself in the shoes of a democratic politician: you need support. You need voters, volunteers, and donations.
You try to move left. But people on the left join third parties, choose not to vote, or don't even care. So what can you do?
You move right. Because you didn't get personal donations, you'll need corporate contributions.
Conservatives volunteer, donate, and have a near-flawless vote turnout. So you plug your nose and turn into a repubocrat.
Now say things change. People on the left say "Wow, in Sweden people more vote, and they haven't bombed anyone lately. Let's act more like
Swedish voters."
So, suddenly volunteers pour in, individual donations soar, and on election day masses of people vote for the first time - and vote a straight democratic ticket.
Now you don't need republicans and corporations, so you can dump them and do the job you came here to do.
***
Don't believe me? Fine. But you'll have to admit there's one difference between democrats and Bush:
With Democrats, you can at least protest. The future with Bush is not as certain:
***
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellctuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."
Bush treats Hispanic-Americans like dirt, though I suppose there's no racism in that, because he treats all Americans like dirt. However, an interesting tidbit: Bush let 12 terrorist highjackers go free. War on terrorism? Not in this administration.
Why is Iraq a mess? Let’s ask the Rough Riders
(Or, Brag loudly and carry a limp twig.)
Someone once said that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. No kidding. Perhaps if someone in the Bush Administration had bothered to read about the Spanish-American war in 1898, and of the thousands who died because of politician’s stupidity and greed, we wouldn’t have had to learn our lesson the hard way.
My source is Arrogant Armies by James M Perry, which records 11 examples of powerful high tech superpowers sending armies to disaster against weak, low-tech enemies. The main cause of disaster is always an arrogant belief that the war will end in a few days, and that no intelligence-gather other than for propaganda purposes is necessary. Sound familiar?
So let’s imagine we can talk to Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders today. What would they be able to tell us about the invasion of Iraq?
1. Lies kill.
Bush and the media told us we were in imminent danger of being blasted into mushroom clouds, or worse during his “elect a war” campaign. The press lovingly reproduces elaborate diagrams of infernal weapons of James-Bond-Villain proportions. Mobile Laboratories, remote controlled drones, and so on – yet when the dust settled it turned out that were all just the works of lurid imaginations.
In 1898, the lie was that the Spanish, through some unknown means, had sabotaged the Maine, a battleship that blew up in Havana harbor after a coal fire hit the ammunition magazine. “But, with screaming headlines and detailed drawings of the infernal device that caused the explosion, the American public opinion was inflamed.”
So what’s wrong with a few lies? The problem is that liars don’t know when to stop lying. Remember our Iraqi allies? The resistance that, it was promised, would rise up and kill Saddam within a few days of our invasion? If only Bush had grown beyond the stage of believing in invisible friends.
In 1989 we were going to war to come to the aid of imaginary friends. Roosevelt describes the civilian rebels: “…it was evident, at a glance, that they would be no use in serious fighting…” At the battle of Las Guasimas, 800 of the rebels were supposed to arrive. None of them did.
The problem with lying is that eventually, one realizes that while it’s difficult to figure out the truth, it’s a lot easier to just make stuff up. Those who try to fool others end by fooling themselves – and getting lots of people killed.
2. Privatization and cronyism lead to disaster.
1898, like 2003, was a time of rigid belief in free-market dogma. There were no food inspectors or regulations, so when soldiers died en masse from eating tainted meat (surely in larger numbers than died aboard the Maine) it was just “tough luck”.
The expedition was launched from Florida, where logistics and supply was in the hands of two private corporations that created “an appalling spectacle of congestion and confusion”.
“Trains soon were backed up all the way to Columbia, South Carolina; on May 18…1000 box cars” were tangled and “only 2 or 3 were being unloaded ever 24 hours.” One had to break open boxes to find what was in them, because there were not even any bills of lading – talk about the private sector eliminating paperwork!
The private companies bickered, and even “continued to run their own trains into town, carrying goods that had nothing to do with the war. Soon, too, passenger trains began showing up, filled with tourists.”
Well, obviously nothing that wacky would happen today, right? Well, consider that the corporations that are supposed to be rebuilding Iraq right now were chosen solely for being cronies of the Bush administration (such as Halliburton, which Dick Cheney used to run) and for providing political campaign donations. Despite free-market talk, there was no competitive bidding. These corporations have made a fortune, and their reconstruction efforts – assuming they’re even trying – are a disaster. Power and water are still not working, even though Saddam had power back on within days of Gulf War 1. Are these corporations a scene of 1898 style chaos, or did they just take the money and run?
3. Playing politics with war is unforgivable.
In 1898 the president’s plan was to build a regular army. However, home-state politicians and National Guard generals began lobbying for their own piece of the action. They attacked the regular army, saying it’s soldiers came from “the lower classes of American society” and, in a guard spokespersons own works “Menace our liberties the stability of our free institutions. This hysterical class warfare was effective. The result was that most soldiers would be National Guard – inexperience, poorly equipped, and would not be ready for months.
In 2003, far less soldiers were sent than were needed. This was due to the lie that Iraq would fall within a matter of days or hours. A small force made the war look minor and (more importantly in Bush’s ruined, debt-ridden economy) cheap. It was pure political salesmanship to sell the Bush administration’s unpopular war, and the price was and is soldier’s lives. Like Vietnam, the war was to be fought on the cheap, and the result was a costly quagmire.
4. Walk softly and carry a big stick.
That was Roosevelt’s motto. Sadly, the motto of “bring ‘em on” Bush seems to be “brag loudly and carry a limp twig.”
(Or, Brag loudly and carry a limp twig.)
Someone once said that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. No kidding. Perhaps if someone in the Bush Administration had bothered to read about the Spanish-American war in 1898, and of the thousands who died because of politician’s stupidity and greed, we wouldn’t have had to learn our lesson the hard way.
My source is Arrogant Armies by James M Perry, which records 11 examples of powerful high tech superpowers sending armies to disaster against weak, low-tech enemies. The main cause of disaster is always an arrogant belief that the war will end in a few days, and that no intelligence-gather other than for propaganda purposes is necessary. Sound familiar?
So let’s imagine we can talk to Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders today. What would they be able to tell us about the invasion of Iraq?
1. Lies kill.
Bush and the media told us we were in imminent danger of being blasted into mushroom clouds, or worse during his “elect a war” campaign. The press lovingly reproduces elaborate diagrams of infernal weapons of James-Bond-Villain proportions. Mobile Laboratories, remote controlled drones, and so on – yet when the dust settled it turned out that were all just the works of lurid imaginations.
In 1898, the lie was that the Spanish, through some unknown means, had sabotaged the Maine, a battleship that blew up in Havana harbor after a coal fire hit the ammunition magazine. “But, with screaming headlines and detailed drawings of the infernal device that caused the explosion, the American public opinion was inflamed.”
So what’s wrong with a few lies? The problem is that liars don’t know when to stop lying. Remember our Iraqi allies? The resistance that, it was promised, would rise up and kill Saddam within a few days of our invasion? If only Bush had grown beyond the stage of believing in invisible friends.
In 1989 we were going to war to come to the aid of imaginary friends. Roosevelt describes the civilian rebels: “…it was evident, at a glance, that they would be no use in serious fighting…” At the battle of Las Guasimas, 800 of the rebels were supposed to arrive. None of them did.
The problem with lying is that eventually, one realizes that while it’s difficult to figure out the truth, it’s a lot easier to just make stuff up. Those who try to fool others end by fooling themselves – and getting lots of people killed.
2. Privatization and cronyism lead to disaster.
1898, like 2003, was a time of rigid belief in free-market dogma. There were no food inspectors or regulations, so when soldiers died en masse from eating tainted meat (surely in larger numbers than died aboard the Maine) it was just “tough luck”.
The expedition was launched from Florida, where logistics and supply was in the hands of two private corporations that created “an appalling spectacle of congestion and confusion”.
“Trains soon were backed up all the way to Columbia, South Carolina; on May 18…1000 box cars” were tangled and “only 2 or 3 were being unloaded ever 24 hours.” One had to break open boxes to find what was in them, because there were not even any bills of lading – talk about the private sector eliminating paperwork!
The private companies bickered, and even “continued to run their own trains into town, carrying goods that had nothing to do with the war. Soon, too, passenger trains began showing up, filled with tourists.”
Well, obviously nothing that wacky would happen today, right? Well, consider that the corporations that are supposed to be rebuilding Iraq right now were chosen solely for being cronies of the Bush administration (such as Halliburton, which Dick Cheney used to run) and for providing political campaign donations. Despite free-market talk, there was no competitive bidding. These corporations have made a fortune, and their reconstruction efforts – assuming they’re even trying – are a disaster. Power and water are still not working, even though Saddam had power back on within days of Gulf War 1. Are these corporations a scene of 1898 style chaos, or did they just take the money and run?
3. Playing politics with war is unforgivable.
In 1898 the president’s plan was to build a regular army. However, home-state politicians and National Guard generals began lobbying for their own piece of the action. They attacked the regular army, saying it’s soldiers came from “the lower classes of American society” and, in a guard spokespersons own works “Menace our liberties the stability of our free institutions. This hysterical class warfare was effective. The result was that most soldiers would be National Guard – inexperience, poorly equipped, and would not be ready for months.
In 2003, far less soldiers were sent than were needed. This was due to the lie that Iraq would fall within a matter of days or hours. A small force made the war look minor and (more importantly in Bush’s ruined, debt-ridden economy) cheap. It was pure political salesmanship to sell the Bush administration’s unpopular war, and the price was and is soldier’s lives. Like Vietnam, the war was to be fought on the cheap, and the result was a costly quagmire.
4. Walk softly and carry a big stick.
That was Roosevelt’s motto. Sadly, the motto of “bring ‘em on” Bush seems to be “brag loudly and carry a limp twig.”
Who says democratic activists are a mish-mash?"
Democratic activists and supporters have one clear, complete agenda: Trust The People. All power to ordinary folks. This is a massive contrast with the republican slogan of “Distrust the people trust only a tiny elite, all powers to a tiny elite.”
Progressive activists and supporters believe that American workers know more about conditions in their own workplaces than some shareholder at a yaught club in some other country.
Americans who keep having trash incinerators zones next door to them know mow about the envrionment than someone with an oil tanker named after them who can drink bottled water and vacation in Monte Carlo with their pocket change.
Ordinary women know more about their own bodies than some activist judge who thinks that men have one less rib.
Folks who live in the inner city know more about their own neiborhoods than someone who lives in a trailor park outside citylimits who is unaware that the civil war has recently ended.
Millions of ordinary voters know more about the issues than one corporate campaign contributor who’s just there to buy patronage.
Ordinary folks who volunteer at soup kitchens, pray for help with real problems, and have jobs closer to carpenders than Ceasars, know more about God than some multi-millionaire televangelist who belives that 9/11 can be blamed on lesbians.
Millions of young people who will pay the debt, live with climate change, and fight the terrorists who are today called "freedom fighters" know more about the future than some half-dead politician who, every day for the past 60 years, has believed tabloids promising armageddon "tommorrow".
Ordinary cops and niebours know more about crime policy than some Enron crony whose gated community has a bylaw banning clotheslines.
Couples who love each other and want to marry know more about morals than some priest whose closest encounter with love was with an altar boy.
Veterans, and war refugees know more about war than National Guard draft-dodgers and fortunate sons who "had other priorities" than their nation during wartime.
Immigrants know more about the American dream than some inbred yokel whose ancestors believed that the Irish would end civilization.
Ordinary teachers know more about teaching than some semi-literate savage who couldn’t read beyond the first chapter of the bible and decided to thump it instead.
Women who work know more about their own workplaces than someone who thinks the "glass ceiling" would be a nice addition to the mansion, but worries that the domestic servants might smear it.
Spies and weapons inspectors know more about security than someone whose sole experience in foreign relations is renaming French Toast and asking if there’s any black people in Brazil.
Ordinary people who worked their way through school and university know more about complex, multifaceted issues than some multi-millionaire radio host whos only skill is name-calling.
That’s the agenda of the radical middle. TRUST THE PEOPLE!
Democratic activists and supporters have one clear, complete agenda: Trust The People. All power to ordinary folks. This is a massive contrast with the republican slogan of “Distrust the people trust only a tiny elite, all powers to a tiny elite.”
Progressive activists and supporters believe that American workers know more about conditions in their own workplaces than some shareholder at a yaught club in some other country.
Americans who keep having trash incinerators zones next door to them know mow about the envrionment than someone with an oil tanker named after them who can drink bottled water and vacation in Monte Carlo with their pocket change.
Ordinary women know more about their own bodies than some activist judge who thinks that men have one less rib.
Folks who live in the inner city know more about their own neiborhoods than someone who lives in a trailor park outside citylimits who is unaware that the civil war has recently ended.
Millions of ordinary voters know more about the issues than one corporate campaign contributor who’s just there to buy patronage.
Ordinary folks who volunteer at soup kitchens, pray for help with real problems, and have jobs closer to carpenders than Ceasars, know more about God than some multi-millionaire televangelist who belives that 9/11 can be blamed on lesbians.
Millions of young people who will pay the debt, live with climate change, and fight the terrorists who are today called "freedom fighters" know more about the future than some half-dead politician who, every day for the past 60 years, has believed tabloids promising armageddon "tommorrow".
Ordinary cops and niebours know more about crime policy than some Enron crony whose gated community has a bylaw banning clotheslines.
Couples who love each other and want to marry know more about morals than some priest whose closest encounter with love was with an altar boy.
Veterans, and war refugees know more about war than National Guard draft-dodgers and fortunate sons who "had other priorities" than their nation during wartime.
Immigrants know more about the American dream than some inbred yokel whose ancestors believed that the Irish would end civilization.
Ordinary teachers know more about teaching than some semi-literate savage who couldn’t read beyond the first chapter of the bible and decided to thump it instead.
Women who work know more about their own workplaces than someone who thinks the "glass ceiling" would be a nice addition to the mansion, but worries that the domestic servants might smear it.
Spies and weapons inspectors know more about security than someone whose sole experience in foreign relations is renaming French Toast and asking if there’s any black people in Brazil.
Ordinary people who worked their way through school and university know more about complex, multifaceted issues than some multi-millionaire radio host whos only skill is name-calling.
That’s the agenda of the radical middle. TRUST THE PEOPLE!
For back issues, see the first version of the liberal bias media.
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