Finally, someone asks the $64,000 dollar question ...

Why Should I Care? Leaders Lack Good Reasons to Vote For Democrats – or Against Republicans

And the answer IS ... there is really not much reason to care. 99.9% of the individuals we elect have made it clear that they take their orders from the corporate world and not from the voters.

Obama made the outrages that Bush pushed on the nation permanent.

The US has come along way down this road ... it's questionable whether we have the fortitude to walk this back.

Banana republic here we come ... oh wait ...

How Revolutionary Oligarchs Seize Power

The United States of Inequality

... ouch, seems we have arrived.

The US Supreme Court decides in favor of The Torturers ...

..The decision does not bode well for either state secrets cases or for suits trying to hold Bush Administration officials responsible for torture (such as the Yoo appeal being heard in the 9th Circuit today).

Which I guess means we’ve officially become a country that finds protecting those who commit torture more important than justice for those who were tortured.

Fascism is what I'm expecting ...

More ominously perhaps, I'm guessing that leadership with fascist inclinations will find a very willing audience.

We seem to be emulating the Germany that allowed a Hitler to take hold. George Bush, with Cheney as his backbone, set us on course. Barack Obama not only fell right in line with the Bush/Cheney corruption but is formalizing the worst and going even further in some instances. I think Obama is furthering unrest by catering to the Media Scolds and the GOP mafia and ignoring the people of this country, specially the ones who elected him. Though I don't expect Obama to be the US's Hitler I think he is setting the stage for such a person.

_____________________
ADDED: The US's own special brand of Court Jesters (who apparently seriously consider themselves journalists) will also, undoubtedly, take their place in the roll call of those who help turn the US into Hitler's Germany's copy cat government. Of course, the US will be 'bigger and better' in that we really do have the power to destroy the world. That is the power to destroy the earth's ability to support us even faster than we already appear determined to do.

... all of this just [...] reveals what our nation's leading "journalists" really are: desperate worshipers of political power who are far more eager to be part of it and to serve it than to act as adversarial checks against it -- and who, in fact, are Royal Court Spokespeople regardless of which monarch is ruling. That's why they're invited into the heart of Versailles to frolic with the King's most trusted aides: it's their reward for loyal service as Court courtiers. Just marvel at the self-abasing joy in which Ed Henry wallows by virtue of getting to play water sports with Emanuel and the Bidens. He sounds like a gushing pre-adolescent who just met his favorite boy band idol and got his water gun signed. ...

Today's quotes ... on disillusionment ...

... it is both disheartening and illuminating to realize that the progressives in Congress have no true commitment to anything but putting on a show.

and

Few organizations resisted the urge to whip for the very bill they asked members of Congress to oppose last August during the fundraising drive for the public option. The entire progressive movement devolved into complete message incoherence as the unions announced their willingness to step outside of the Democratic party in order to enforce corporate deals within it. ...

and

... The thing I have learned above all else in this campaign is that the corporate control of government is much more extensive than I ever imagined, and the tools we have to fight its influence are ineffective.

and

... In the end, what we learned is that we can’t count on members of Congress in either party to do anything but play their part in “villain rotation”

GOP malfeasance ...

I had decided not to post anything about the standard sexism demonstrated by PZMyers at Pharyngula where he embodies in Palin all the stupidities of the GOP.

PZMyers writes:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Then Tristero at digby's put it into perspective: Republicans vs. Science

Sarah Palin isn't the issue here. Sure, I'll concede that this illustrates Palin's breathtaking ignorance AND her stupidity. After all, she agreed to repeat it. But what it really demonstrates is how unqualified the upper echelons of the Republican party are to run this country. She certainly didn't write this speech: John McCain's advisers did and approved every appalling word.

And that's the point. Sara Palin, ignorance and all, represents the Republican Party. And a significant portion of that party is very happy with her and her ignorance. George Bush, ignorance and all, represented the Republican Party. And a significant portion of this entire country fell right in line. Education, science, reason are not respected by a startling number of US Citizens. Neither are fairness, justice, equality under the law.

If the Republicans are not overwhelmingly defeated then I will believe the slide into authoritarianism will continue whether Obama is elected or not. And if Obama is elected I doubt that he will push back the continued creep of authoritarianism unless we, the people, insist that he do so.

Another perspective on the same subject: The Results Will Have to Come In

So, if we can't even effect the outcome of FISA how can we do anything about a war with Iran ...

Prefatory Thoughts on the Enablers of Evil

War has always been and will always be the most crucial means by which repressive, tyrannical government cements its massive powers and acquires still new ones. The consequences of an attack on Iran will be huge and certainly irreversible, at least in our lifetimes, both at home and abroad. It's an interesting question: why all these fired-up activists will take on a battle such as the FISA one, while they are absolute in their refusal to try to stop the drive to war with Iran.

This Enablers of Evil post has interesting responses to digby's post Talk to the Hand. His knowledge of history adds an important perspective for those who are trying to figure out how best to address what's happening to our country. I've thought for sometime now that we've already lost though like with Obama and FISA I do keep hoping I'm wrong. It's very easy from hindsight to list the steps that led to catastrophe, but it not so easy to know which is the fatal step when you're on that downward staircase yourself. It's apparent to many that we've taken most of the step that lead to fascism (corporate/government authoritarianism, if you prefer). Can we step back? I don't know. The steps get easier and easier, specially with the 'Democratic' Congress and the 'Democratic nominee' cooperating so thoroughly.

Even though history shows us the pattern, outcomes do vary.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

... Posing, posturing, pretend progressives prevent progress...

... This is simply the way the American elite have always functioned. Ideology, morality, patriotism, law – all must give way to the relentless and ruthless pursuit of wealth, and the power and privilege and dominance wealth brings. Prescott Bush traded with the Nazis, even when they were killing Americans, because there was money in it. For the same reason, his son, Prescott Jr., has long been a leading figure in trading with the repressive communist regime in China (as have Dubya's brother Neil -- and Don Rumsfeld too, for that matter.). For the same reason, Prescott Senior's other son, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his son, George Walker Bush, have long had extensive and intimate business ties with the violent religious extremists in Saudi Arabia, and with a number of other tyrants throughout the Middle East and around the world.

... you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

Working together with the State, the U.S.-bound media will distort the reality themselves. The American government will tell them the fight has happened because the smugglers are growing frustrated with the outstanding control of the U.S.’s border with Mexico. The correspondents of the American papers working in Mexico will know better but their shouts will go unheeded for the faster, easier story. Some truths are more comfortable than others.

Notice this? ...

In Reuters little blurb about the FBI collecting a ton on biometric data on Americans (and others) is this paragraph:

At an employer's request, the FBI will also retain the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, the paper said.

Your employer, or potential employer can tell the FBI to retain YOUR fingerprints just because they did a background check?

If the people don't fight this, between an increasingly authoritarian government (including Democrats) and the corporate lust for absolute power over employees, individual citizens of this country will have no rights at all.

Non-violent protesters are just soooo dangerous ...

... to any authoritarian non-democratic government.

TUCSON JUDGE DENIES BAIL; DECLARES TWO WHO PROTEST TORTURE "...A DANGER ...

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Republican are scared to death that Democrats will do the right thing and Republicans will do everything they can, including cheating, lying and violence, to destroy the Democrats ability to do so!
... [The Republicans] greatest fear is that if the Democrats do win,

It would probably also mean a national health-insurance program that would irrevocably expand government involvement in the economy and American life, and itself make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future.

I think that sentence contains a grim truth for progressives: the right will fight any health reform tooth and nail. They believe — and so do I — that the implications of universal coverage would extend far beyond health care, that it would revitalize the New Deal idea. And so they’ll do anything to stop it. ... will the Democrats and the people of the United States let the Republicans destroy the American peoples' future to further line the pockets of the greedy and the corrupt?


The Plot to Seize the White House" by Jules Archer It's an incredible 1974 book, re-released earlier this year (2007, about the conspiracy of US financial barons to stage a military coup to overthrow FDR in 1934. The connections to current corporate ambitions make it very pertinent to US politics today. And it's a very good read, very detailed and well researched by historian Archer.


... Under the Republican faux-libertarianism that finds its current crown princes in figures like Grover Norquist and Ron Paul, government can indeed be ably used as an enforcing tool of bigotry, but not of tolerance; government can indeed be used as a valid tool of industry against citizenry, but not the reverse; government, most of all, is a failure by its mere existence -- unless it serves their own thinly drawn purposes, of course. It is the shallowest and most crass interpretation possible of societal good and, indeed, of civilization, which goes to explain why it is so popular among certain groups.


Calling Bush stupid is certainly satisfying. It is, in a number of respects true; for Bush’s ideas are original in approximately the way tape recorders play back sounds never heard before. And originality is a sign of genius. Furthermore, it is a habit of the educated middle class meritocracy to equate stupidity with failure. So by calling Bush stupid we call him a failure. There certainly are ways in which the Bush administration failed. But we do ourselves a great disservice in dwelling on this idea; for it is not the ways in which Bush has failed but the ways he has succeeded that will define the most dangerous legacy of the administration. [...] I have long argued that the Iraq war is nothing but a distraction. It is what we talk about because we understand it. But the Iraq war is not the central thrust of the Dubya administration. It is the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the remarkably blatant attempts to undermine or subvert every part of the federal government that have been the main business of the administration. The remarkable level of success came, in part, because we have for the duration of his term seen Dubya as an idiot, an underachiever, a spoilt golden-boy.

It’s time we behave more intelligently.


... being less crazy than the Republicans is not a policy. ... nor a recommendation. If only Democratic politicians would allow this concept through their skulls.

Manson eyes ...

Images from a video at DailyKos:

DHinMI tells why what he calls Bush Authoritarianism is not fascism in Bush Authoritarianism: Blackwater+Amway=GOP, Pt. 2

But the main reason why it’s wrong to refer to Bush authoritarianism as fascist is, simply, that it’s not fascist. Fascism exalted the state as the most powerful force, more powerful than any other institutions, including business. It was to be the embodiment of the mobilized masses, and while big business was largely left alone, all other institutions and individuals were to subservient to the state. In contrast, Bush authoritarianism, and the broader movement of what Klein calls "disaster capitalism," doesn’t seek to build up the state or mobilize the masses in a nationalist cause. Instead, it seeks to destroy most aspects of the federal government, and turn over tax dollars to private enterprises sucking at the teat of the taxpayer under the guise of greater efficiencies. This is the antithesis of fascism.

I did think that the business interests in those Fascist countries of yore were more entwined with those governments than this paragraph seems to suggest. I also thought that the neo-Conservatives in this country were originally called neo-Fascists.

The real fight is here ...

Read this post (the entire thing) at Crooks and Liars: Armed Madhouse: Don’t become a victim of voter fraud in 2008

Our real fight is here in the US.

Who should you be afraid of ...

If you are not 'more afraid' of what BushCo has done to the government than the biggest threat the terrorists can devise then you are not paying attention ... If you are not aware that BushCo's idea of port security is the harassment of travellers while ignoring imports and from other countries then you are not paying attention ...


If you don't think the world has always been dangerous then you haven't learned anything about our country's history nor the world's history. An authoritarian country is mostly concerned with controlling everything about you but your actually safety means very little to them. They will break your legs, they will waterboard you, they will disappear you because ... well they'll have their reasons and they will be important ones, to them, just be a good little slave and they may leave you and yours alone; unless, of course they don't like you, you look wrong to them, you are in the wrong place, they need a patsy ... well, that's the price you pay for their type of safety, you should be grateful.

Amid the twittering of politicians, military reality?

McClatchy reports: Despite Iraq reports, troops' future is set by Nancy A. Youssef and Renee Schoof

No matter what Army Gen. David Petraeus tells Congress about the surge in Iraq on Monday, the course for U.S. troops there is already set: Next April, the 30,000 troops who were added this year will begin coming home.
...

U.S. military officials are assuming that the buildup of 30,000 additional American troops will continue until April, although a senior military official told McClatchy Newspapers that they may redeploy a brigade ...

By the end of March, however, Pentagon officials said, deployment schedules will force a reduction and the five brigades added for the surge will begin leaving, one month at a time.

Pentagon planners say they can't maintain the surge beyond that without extending deployments beyond the current 15 months, and the nation's top military leaders have said they can't do that with inflicting significant damage on the Army and the Marine Corps.

As if they care? No one in power has paid more than timid lip service to the realities of what the United States is doing to itself and others. Why start now? Geez ...

The article goes on to quote Reid as follows: ""We're not backing off anything," Reid said Thursday." Not backing off? They do nothing, but they are not backing off of doing nothing. How brave ...

Goodness, Pelosi started the new session of Congress with a plan ... now, after a well paid and lengthy vacation her amorphous organization returns to Washington with a well thought out "they might do this and they might do that" ...

In the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is considering putting up a measure for a vote that would require military planning for a withdrawal. The House also might take up a measure similar to the Webb amendment on longer rest time.

... or they might do nothing just like the Senate, more likely.

And then there's this statement from a Republican Congressman from NC, Walter Jones: "You cannot just sit back and just watch." They have gall, those Republicans.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Congress had put off a real discussion of what was right for national security, waiting for the Petraeus and Crocker reports. Now, he said, debate must begin on a strategy that will be sustainable and that fits with other national security interests.

That's right, they waited months and months for 'a report' and 'a visit' from Petraeus and now they must strategize on what they will wait for next.

Good show.

Would the US get what it deserves if it attacks Iran? In the long run, probably ...

So writes Steve at the Last Chance Democracy Cafe:

So how big a disaster would such an attack turn out to be for this country? My guess, based on reading what a variety of experts have to say, is that the initial attack would likely be very successful, devastating Iran’s military assets. Our pilots would probably very quickly gain complete air dominance, free to bomb at will and greatly restricting Iran’s ability to strike back directly.

Who knows? Maybe we’d be honored with another “Mission Accomplished” moment (perhaps Bush could parachute in this time).

But soon enough, just like in Iraq — only worse — everything would go to hell. Contrary to the neoconservative’s dreams, the Islamic extremists in charge wouldn’t be overthrown — they’d be strengthened due to outrage against the United States. Attacks would increase against our troops in Iraq; Afghanistan would likely fall into complete anarchy. Terrorist attacks against US interests would increase across the globe. Meanwhile, oil prices would go through the ceiling, with the global economy taking a nosedive.

We've already seen that the Republicans enthusiastically and the Democrats with barely a foot dragging will follow the moron and the insane (Bush and Cheney) any where. Will the US Military also ride, fly and sail over the edge of sanity, humanity and rationality with the cartoon-like duo that is 'leading' the U.S. to its destruction?

Were the Democrats in Congress our last hope? If so, they have failed us. What are our options now?

Fascism entrenched ...

One sure way for the fascist minded to keep control of the government is to pass control of intelligence gathering and covert operations to 'hired' contractors.

Outsourcing intelligence by James Carroll

... The Washington Post reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency is transferring "core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection" to private contractors -- up to a billion dollars worth. This raises the prospect that hired guns, instead of sworn officials, will be conducting covert operations, spying missions, interrogations, "renditions," surveillance -- the whole dangerous complex of shadow activity that began as the government's most sensitive responsibility.

Given the often shocking record of what US intelligence officials have done over the years, why does it matter if such activities are carried out by contractors? The answer patently goes to the question of accountability. Public servants who are bound by oaths to the Constitution and the law understand what the measure of behavior must be, even if they fall short of it. Activities involving the surreptitious, especially, have properly been reserved to public institutions subject to political oversight. Private parties, bound by contract, operate at remove from such limit and accountability, which may be why borderline activities like interrogation or rendition are increasingly farmed out to them. ...

A state of ignorance ...

From The Sideshow:

If, as Grist reports, Al Gore is telling a New York Times columnist that he advocates civil disobedience, then I don't think he's going to run for president: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Mr. Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

If our Representatives in the House and Senate are so amazingly ignorant of the Constitution that they swear to uphold, what does one expect from the rest of the citizenry? Our education system has been starved and often under attack for decades. We have been taught to shop and strive to turn our person and personality into some kind of corporate created image of what we 'should' be. Speaking up in public embarrasses the whole room and if the police are about can actually be very dangerous to one's own person. We have been trained to refrain from 'talking back.' AND that any utterance IS back-talk. We know that the authorities can, with impunity, lie to us. But not only do the authorities lie to the public (for our own good, of course) they lie everywhere including in court under oath.

Whether we have completely crossed over from a representative democracy into a corporate fascist country I don't know. But psychologically it appears we have. There is little outrage against these criminals who are running our country. There may be a shift in support for Bush. But there's little outrage for the criminal destruction of a country that did not attack us. To our TV-reality country it was just another 'good show.'

I don't know what will wake up this country or if it is even possible to arouse it from it's corporate induced dream state.

THIS ... is ... what ... they ... want ... to ... train ... officers ... with?

Crazies to the left of us, crazies to the right of us ...

via David Horowitz writes me a letter by Rick Perlstein

via The Great Circle of Insanity by Kagro X

Just 10 easy steps ...

And the steps have already been taken: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

... As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. ...

Link via Crooks and Liars.