The Face of Fascism

Truthout.org explains how you're looking right into it. The excerpt below speaks volumes.

Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, according to current and former administration officials.

The officials work or had worked in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council in a senior capacity and had direct knowledge of the Vice President's campaign to discredit Wilson.

In interviews over the course of two days this week, these officials were urged to speak on the record for this story. But they resisted, saying they had already testified before a grand jury investigating the leak of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and added that speaking out against the administration and specifically Vice President Cheney would cause them to lose their jobs and subject their families to vitriolic attacks by the White House.

The officials said they decided to speak out now because they have become disillusioned with the Bush administration's policies regarding Iraq and the flawed intelligence that led to the war.

They said their roles, along with several others at the CIA and State Department, included digging up or "inventing" embarrassing information on the former Ambassador that could be used against him, preparing memos and classified material on Wilson for Cheney and the National Security Council, and attending meetings in Cheney's office to discuss with Cheney, Hadley, and others the efforts that would be taken to discredit Wilson.

Remember, Wilson was an ambassador who had been highly decorated by Bush Sr., had personally faced down Saddam Hussein before the first Iraq war. He was a valuable public servant, as was his wife, Valerie Plame, who had undertaken dangerous missions in antiproliferation of WMD.

But woe behold you should you criticize the Chimpettes with the truth.

Cheney is a traitor, a fascist, and a disgrace.

Ah, the Stunning Reality of Bushworld

This really galls the shit out of me, because I worked as a contractor to NASA many years ago--best job I ever had. Anyway, this little twerp, George Deutsch, was appointed to be a public affairs officer at NASA. His qualifications? He worked on Chimpie's campaign in the "war room" as a fucking intern. So this little twerp does the following, according to the New York Times:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

And that's because Deutsch is an expert in the subject, seeing as he has a mighty BA in Journalism from Texas A&M.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

Okay, are you getting nervous yet? The key words here are "factual information."

Well, you know, it turned out that this twerp's mighty BA in Journalism from Texas A&M wasn't exactly "factual information." Oops!

The Times and the scientificactivist.blogspot.com Web site reported that Deutsch, who worked on President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, lied about his college degree.

And how did this deeply guarded secret get spirited out of its little hidey-hole? Well, you know, it was real cloak-and-dagger stuff, nothing you'd expect our terrific mainstream media to do or the White House, for that matter, because it's a really dangerous, complicated investigation to undertake. Nick Anthis, the good citizen who uncovered the twerp's little problem, explains:

[H]ow did this guy, who already had dubious qualifications, make it into NASA with such an obvious lie on his resume? To work for a federal agency, including NASA, extensive background checks are usually required. If I was able to uncover the truth about Deutsch in one phone call, then he must have been placed in his current position without any investigation, due to his loyal service on the Bush presidential campaign.

He uncovered the truth in one god-damned telephone call!

And that's why Wolf Blitzer is such a megastar on cable news. He'd never sully himself with such underhanded snooping of a Chimpie appointee.

Damned bloggers! Ruining it for kneepad journalists everywhere!

Nick Anthis--now, there's an American hero.

No Such Thing as Blasphemy

Let me state a position at the onset: no freedom is more important than freedom of expression. If there is anything that can keep totalitarianism at bay, it is the right of information to pass among people, and that the expression of that information be given as free a range as possible. If it offends, it offends.

We have two ways of dealing with our differences: dialogue or violence. And if we are to fully exploit dialogue in the avoidance of violence, then its field of expression must be as broad as possible. Whether it's "Piss Christ"--Anthony Serrano's piece that had Christians in a froth--or Mohammed in a bomb turban, or Vishnu giving it in the hindquarters to Buddha, or L. Ron Hubbard licking Zoroaster's teabag, or Larry Flynt's portrayal of Jerry Falwell's fond remembrance of drunken sex with his mother, it is protected speech. Burning the American flag in America is protected. Invoking God's name in vain, or the gods' names in vain is protected. Throwing a pie in Che's face is also protected. In fact, if it offends, all the more reason it needs to be protected, because we don't construct meaningful dialogue on unitary agreement.

Conflict through dialogue, offensive cartoons, skewered saints, brutal satire, mean-spirited diatribes is where it's at. Cluster bomb units, bullets, bludgeons, guillotines, napalm, depleted uranium warheads and the like pale by comparison for really resolving our differences.

Violence is for dummies.

Gasoline on the Fire at the White House

Valerie Plame was protected by the CIA as a NOC (non-official cover). That makes leaking her name criminal, treasonous, and disgusting, and anyone who assisted in the cover-up should be fired, indicted, tried, and if convicted, jailed. Primary candidate:

The new papers show Libby testified he was told about Plame by Cheney "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June—before he talked about her with Miller and Time magazine's Matt Cooper. Libby's trial has been put off until January 2007, keeping Cheney off the witness stand until after the elections.

Oh wait, Dick--wouldn't someone harming the interests of our nation be committing some form of terrorism? In that case, no indictment, no trial, and no acknowledgment of their disappearance. Just a nice cold cell in an undisclosed location, punctuated by whatever Alberto "Tortureboy" Gonzalez says is permissible, which means, as I recall, any infliction of pain up to the point of organ failure. And since Tortureboy will be in Congress next week to defend some other illegal practices, why not get him to renew his declaration that torture is necessary--if fact, it's the greatest pleasure he ever experienced since coaching Chimpie when to throw the switch on Texas' death row inmates.

That's what this should be, IF, that is, the Democrats don't do their usual complete retreat, duck and cover on impeachment and if the rest of the mainstream media does its usual thing and gives endless airtime to administration hacks who will spin this to mean that well, even if the CIA said she was a covert agent, it doesn't really mean that if Chimpie or Cheney thinks otherwise.

Courage or gutlessness? Placing any bets?

If It Were a Drinking Game, We'd Be Dead

It drives me absolutely nuts. Every time Chimpie says, "What the American people gotta understand..." or, "What you gotta understand is..." I need a drink, because the idea that this half-wit could explain anything to any thinking person is (a)absurd on its face, (b) impossible since likely he doesn't understand what he purports to explain, (c) exemplary as to how completely disconnected from any constructive criticism he is, and (d) proof that although his daddy bought him an MBA from Harvard, he doesn't know shit about management.

This last point really galls me, because the one big no-no in negotiation or in mediation is that you never, ever claim to be the authority on anything. A leader never, ever demeans his audience by telling them how ignorant they are, assuming only he can explain away their deficit of knowledge. And finally, the idiotic grin he takes on, the way he leans forward, and the thrusting of his hands out in front all belie the self-proclaimed expertise--he is clearly a man out of his depth, desperately (and badly) pretending to be someone he doesn't even know he can never be, and buoyed only by a lifelong safety net of daddy's friends and his own toadying lackeys and powermad fascists like Karl Rove who keep him from smashing badly on the rocks of his own stupendously baseless arrogance.

Even worse, of course, is having to listen to the crack-tongueing acolytes in the press trying to make sense out of his yawping. They should know better, but of course as whores always understand, you don't make the john feel bad about himself, even if he doesn't know where to put his dick.

More Confidence in Our Election Process

Oh...my...God. If Ohio doesn't scare you, today the Republicans even rigged their own internal election for Majority Leader.

The election was marked by confusion for a time when it appeared that the number of ballots cast exceeded the number of eligible voters by one.

We're...so...fucked.

Look to Ohio to Show Us the Way: First in Fascism!

If you aren't scared now, then you're either comatose or rubbing your hands with glee at the coming clampdown. From The Free Press in Columbus, Ohio, a little taste of election "reform" soon to visit your state:

Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature has passed a repressive new law that will gut free elections here and is already surfacing elsewhere around the US. The bill will continue the process of installing the GOP as America's permanent ruling party.

Coming with the swearing in of right-wing extremist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, it marks another dark day for what remains of American democracy.

Called HB3, the law now demands discriminatory voter ID, severely cripples the possibility of statewide recounts and actually ends the process of state-based challenges to federal elections---most importantly for president---held within the state.

In other words, the type of legal challenge mounted to the theft of Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 election will now be all but impossible in the future.

Liberty my ass.

Late Night Study of Interest

Now why does this finding not surprise me? (from a study presented at a Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference last week):

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.

Of course, you know those academics--bunch of commie, minority-lovin', Murka-hatin' elitists.

Hmm, Perhaps the GOP Wife Story Is Fishy

You know, as I think of it, doesn't the ousting of a GOP wife (see previous post immediately below) seem awfully convenient if it occurred after Cindy Sheehan was removed and arrested? After all, Ms. Sheehan was arrested, while Ms. Young was only removed.

Your "balanced" media spinning the news for the regime again?

Proof of 1st Amendment Death: GOP Wife Ousted from SOTU

Oh, man, but this is good. It's not just Cindy Sheehan who gets tossed, but anyone with any kind of writin' on her t-shirt.

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom."

C.W. Bill Young is a Republican, mind you, so his wife was nice and cozy in the Chimperor's inner circle.

She was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.

I have to hand it to Ms. Young--she went right to the heart of the problem with the whole damned administration.

"They said I was protesting," she told the St. Petersburg Times. "I said, "Read my shirt, it is not a protest.' They said, 'We consider that a protest.' I said, 'Then you are an idiot.'"

ABC News did not make it clear whether or not this was directed at the president, his wife, advisor Karl Rove, or any other administration shithead.

Wonderful, just wonderful.

"Chimpie, You're Doin' a Helluva Job"--Part Deux

So you hate me because I think that George W. Bush is the greatest fraud, failure, incompetent, and crook in the history of the US presidency? I keep hearing the talking heads on TV repeat that Bush's strength, despite all else, is his war on terror. Well, Bob Geiger analyzes that effort using Homeland Security's own data.

Remember, failure is success, slavery is freedom, and Chimpie is the Great Leader.

The Crushing of Free Speech

First Cindy Sheehan is hauled out of the gallery of Capitol building before the State of the Union bullshit for simply wearing a t-shirt that said "2242 Dead. How Many More?" She did nothing but take her jacket off. You see, in a place that is owned by the American people but ruled by Chimpie, it is now illegal to silently wear a message that contains nothing but a statement of fact and a simple question. It wasn't hostile, didn't call Bush a half-witted sociopath, didn't name Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and Rice as war criminals, it didn't do anything offensive. But Ms. Sheehan was yanked from the gallery, even though she had a valid ticket, and then detained for four hours.

Meanwhile, Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri are running loose and al Qaeda gains strength worldwide. Good job boys! You got that Sheehan woman corraled. As we all know, SHE'S the REAL THREAT to the Chimperor.

And now there are stories of the Pentagon brass demanding retraction of a political cartoon. I can't vouch for them yet (I just read it on Americablog) but while they are certainly entitled to their opinion of Tom Toles' cartoon, to call for suppression of unsettling but nevertheless valid observations of Donald Rumsfeld's regard for how the instrument of our military is used are as protected under the 1st Amendment as wearing a t-shirt without obscenity or proscribed incitements in a public place.

Bit by bit, the fascists chew upon the liberties of the people. And the people continue to sleep and dream.

Another Step Toward the Totalitarian State

Well, thanks yet again to gutless Democrats who voted for cloture, the Bushits now have their loyal lackey on the Supreme Court. I speak, of course, of the confirmation of Samuel Alito, who is probably at this very moment swearing his allegiance to the person of George W. "Chimpie" Bush in the tradition of Roland Freisler.

Disgusting. Fifty-nine million suckers vote for a half-wit president. Now not even the courts can save us from his delusions.

I May Be Lazy or Just Worn Out

My apologies. I just can't get up the energy to rant or rave or analyze or anything lately. Part of it is a rotten cold that just won't go away, and the other part is that the tidal wave of evidence of criminality of the Chimperor administration still hasn't mobilized the kind of resistance and demonstrations nationally that I would have thought would have occurred. After participating in a massive demonstration against war in Iraq in 2003 in San Francisco, I would have thought that layering on torture, secret prisons, domestic spying, Katrina's aftermath, and every other example of malfeasance and incompetence on top of this idiotic war would have surely toppled any administration.

But I was wrong. Yes, the media is complacent or complicit in the fostering of this apathy, but I have to think that the trouble really does lie with us as individuals. Do we as Americans deserve this bastards and what they're doing to what's left of our republic?

Maybe we do. Maybe it's our turn to suffer the humiliation of downslide into the fascination of history along with Rome, Napoleonic France, and the British Empire, all done in by arrogance and overreaching and a failure to understand that the world is bigger than we are.

Maybe we do.

When in Doubt, Go Stupid

This is Bushit tactic # 13, when denial, refutation, and magic sideshows don't suffice. Remember Condi (I'm So Fucking Incompetent!) Rice said that no one could ever imagine anyone flying planes into buildings? Or that the title of that report, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States" didn't set off any alarms in the then-National Security Advisor's head?

Fast forward to Hurricane Katrina. Thanks to today's News York Times we have Chimpie clearly emulating the Rice model.

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

The internal department documents, which were forwarded to the White House, contradict statements by President Bush and the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, that no one expected the storm protection system in New Orleans to be breached.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Mr. Bush said in a television interview on Sept. 1. "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

Apart from the startling lack of confidence he shows in his own administration, this is an outright lie, something like #349 by my count. And yet his popularity remains above single digits. Are there really so many wingnuts/clueless dummies/religious crazies out there? Are 38 percent of the people still convinced that Bush is anything but an utter disaster for the country?

Yeah, who is truly stupid here?

History's Brutal Lessons

I've hesitated to broach this angle on the subject of executive power, but the relentless assaults by the Bush administration on our civil liberties under the excuse of wartime necessity is pushing us dangerously close to the brink of a precipice from which there is no recovery without disaster and mass suffering.

Last year, I returned to my onetime home of Berlin, Germany, to revisit a city which hosted me for over four years. It had been nearly 30 years since I had been there, and the Cold War had ended, the country was united, and Berlin had reclaimed its status as an international capital city.

It was a marvelous reunion, but I'll leave the tourism and cultural report for another time. What I was most struck by were two exhibits, one entitled "The Topography of Terror," and the other "Legalized Robbery." The first covered the manner in which the Nazi regime legitimized its oppression, imprisonment, and execution of dissidents, all the way to the extreme of genocidal attacks on Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, and other groups. The keyword here is "legitimized."

We'd all like to think of the Nazis as just a bunch of gangsters who illegally seized the power apparatus and then ran amok. But that was hardly the case. Hitler was elected. Then he used the apparatus of the state to dismantle all checks and balances and concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands. When the Gestapo kicked down a door and dragged a family to interrogation and then concentration camps, it was all done with the legal authority of legislation and the blessing of courts packed with sympathetic justices. One of the most striking images for me was a photograph of black-robed judges giving the Nazi salute as they swore allegiance to the fuhrer. Remember that judges were supposed to be independent arbiters of legality under the constitution, just like here in the US.

The other exhibit, "Legalized Robbery," was as heartbreaking as it was informative. Relics of Jews whose names had been lost were on display: letters, combs, household articles, locks of hair, rings, photographs. Again, what was most striking was the careful explanation how it was under legal authority that these people were dispossessed of their personal property, and then charged, tried, imprisoned, and exterminated, all with the blessing of law. The paperwork was filled out properly and duly signed by empowered authority. Courts jammed with crony judges presided over trials and appeals processes.

You know the rest. I just wish we could heed the warnings of history about executive authority claiming greater and greater power for fear of external threats, and now a perpetual war against a concept of terror, rather than a specific enemy. This vagueness is no error, for in attempting to constitute unlimited authority it is necessary to keep the rationale as vague and shapeless and fearful as possible.

Yes, they claim that this time it's different. But if we did not have to yield so much of our civil freedom during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had the means, method, and motivation to lob thousands of nuclear warheads upon our heads, and also permeated our society with spies, then why is it that disorganized bands of religious fanatics require even more stringent restrictions?

The reasons are clear, and it has little to do with protecting American citizens. This is about power and its seizure by dangerous people, just as it was in 1933 in central Europe. The Germans aren't afraid to face their own horrible past. Why are we so frightened to benefit from those same lessons?

More Fuel for Chimpie's Pyre

From an article in The Texas Monthly, rightly entitled "The Pimping of the Presidency":

Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Rotten from the head down, from the tail up, from the spleen out, from the skin in. Dirty, filthy, stinking, rotten.

You're Doin' a Heckuva Job, Chimpie

More good news for those who keep insisting on a war on terror that should "last the rest of our lives," since their own actions seem to be creating yet more of what they claim to want to stop.

President Bush's efforts to spread democracy to the Middle East have strengthened Islamists across the region, posing fresh challenges for the United States, according to U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and democracy experts.

Islamist parties trounced secular opponents in recent elections in Iraq and Egypt.

Isn't that swell? Of course, in Bushworld, up is down, democracy is tyranny, and torture is affection, so I guess Islamist victories over secular candidates is, what? The triumph of American values?

If you're Pat Robertson or Sen. Tom "Kill the Abortionists" Coburn of Oklahoma, then yes, indeed, theocratic fascists rising to power must be something to really celebrate. And perhaps that reveals what may be the Bushit secret agenda to roll out in the Mideast what they desire for this country--a totalitarian state run by clerics of a certain fanatical Christian persuasion.

Or it could be another case of the marvelous and stupefying incompetence of these idiots. It's hard to know. Diabolical or stupid?

Probably both.

Time for a Diaper Change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Proof of torture, bribery scandals, admissions of illegal spying, lies leading to a horrible war, low poll numbers--on and on it goes, and still Chimpie and Company claim that everything is cool and they are going to resolutely stay the course until the country is finally trashed into the oblivion of history. But something passed under my eyes from Zogby that should have the Bushits crapping their pants. Why has the Chimperor's job approval rating slipped back below 40 percent?

The deterioration in the President’s numbers appears to be the result of eroding support among the investor class and others who supported him in his 2004 re-election bid, said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. And the problem is the Iraq war – just 34% of respondents said Mr. Bush was doing a good or excellent job managing the war, down from 38% approval in a Zogby poll taken in mid-October.

Yes, folks, the investor class has at long last realized that national bankruptcy, unlimited defense expansions, and imperial wars are perhaps not going to fatten their 401Ks quite as much as the peaceful 1990s did. They're slow, to be sure, but they do catch on, and when they do and all those low-tax-lovin' quasi libertarians realize that their privacy is pierced, their sex lives will be judged by Pat Robertson and their kids are going to be working minimum-wage jobs for managers out of Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur, suddenly the crypto-fascism of the Bushits does have a price too high to pay, no matter how much wealth it means they can pry from the tightening fists of the underprivileged everywhere else.

Tightening fists of rage against the US. To wit, according to Forbes,

Socialist Michelle Bachelet won Chile's presidential with 53.5 pct of the vote and a seven-point lead over her rival, according to partial results with most of the ballots counted.

Where have you gone, Augusto Pinochet? No, it doesn't look like good times are coming for US companies in Chile, or in the rest of Latin America. I guess decades of supporting right-wing death squads are finally completing the karmic circle, not to mention supporting an attempted coup against a legally elected leader in Venezuela, and God knows what other shenanigans are in the works to try to destabilize Bolivia, Brazil, and any other nation that decides to look after its own people instead of US business interests.

The virtue of business is that it has only a single virtue--making money for the investors--and its pretty good at it, all the way to the point of influencing/coercing the military and espionage arms of government to do dirty work for it. But when that government is run by a bunch of half-witted ideologues who also happen to be almost perfect incompetents in everything they attempts, well, the business community, under which stands the "investor class" gets rather pissed off. The Bush policies have made it popular to boycott American products, have virtually ensured the death of the US auto industry, pushed the health care system to the precipice, and failed to do anything smart about immigration, among other idiocies, that are making the moneymakers very, very nervous.

And the investor class, baby, it wants to get paid. I know--I'm one of 'em. Give me my pound of flesh you Chimpite motherfuckers!

Why I'm Proud to Be a Swedish Boy

I am so grateful for my Swedish heritage when I read something like this. Swedes rise up and declare your secular militancy!

Swedish logo designer Bjorn Atldax did something that even the American ACLU could not do: He made walking advertisements among young Swedes for an anti-Christian message.

I don't know if it's really anti-Christian. It seems to me more as play with symbols. Also, if you're a gnostic and believe that Christians are mistaken in worshipping the current God (because Satan really took over at the crucifixion) then what could be more Christian than upsetting the current dogma? Anyway...

In tragically hip Sweden, where churchgoing has been declining for decades, Bjorn Atldax is seen as something of a folk hero. Secular Sweden is far more concerned about maintaining free speech.

Imagine that! A country that values free speech!

Go Ingrid! Go Jonas! Go Astrid, Ingemar, and Olaf! Go Sweden!