This week I have been focused on my real job, so this week's newsletter not quite as in depth as I sometimes do. This week I am focusing on what I consider some interesting races around the country. I may do that for a few weeks or so because I am learning about so many really good people running who I want to help. This week I focus on Nebraska Senate, Oklahoma Senate, and an Iowa state legislature race.

Last week I discussed the economic mess we are in. Someone commented that I am making things up and that job growth has been fine under Bush. She claimed I gave no evidence that job growth has been nearly flat during the Bush administration. Well, let me quote Paul Krugman, with an illustration:

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Wild Wild Left, the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.

Most Americans are eager to turn the page on the Bush years. Yet even as we elect a new president we're still coming to terms with an era that has both tarnished America's reputation and diminished its influence.

Fred Kaplan chronicles the folly of the Bush years in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (John Wiley & Sons).

Kaplan writes that,

"Nearly all of America's blunders in war and peace these past few years stem from a single grand misconception: that the world changed after 9/11, when in fact it didn't.

Certainly, things about the world changed, not least Americans' sudden awareness that they were vulnerable. But the way the world works - the nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations - remained essentially the same."

Is there any area of our government, over the span of the last seven years, any area, in domestic or foreign policy, national defense, public welfare, the economy, name it, where the average, reasonably informed American might point to success, to signs of progress, of improvement, something, anything, to point to with satisfaction, with pride?

Yesterday I read an article by Steve Benin on the resignation of Karen Hughes from her post as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a mouthful there, and a job for which she was as ill suited and unqualified as the man who appointed her and in which, during her two year tenure, she accomplished little, if anything.

In truth, she accomplished nothing, unless you want to count convincing large portions of the world that all Americans must be as out of touch with reality, as clueless and unthinking as their current Commander in Chief, and at that she excelled, as anyone might, having been dispatched to the Middle East with the rank of Ambassador, but without knowledge of the language, culture, history, religions, and general pet peeves of the various states and peoples of the region.

But Karen Hughes was tapped for her office for the same reasons as all Bush appointees are chosen, not for expertise or experience, not for performance or integrity in public service but for loyalty, for unwavering belief in the Messianic delusions of neo conservatism, and a willingness to march in lockstep, nah, goose step, against all who might disagree or dissent.

The "Hitler comparison" should be shouted from the rooftops, as should the Goebbels comparison, the Himmler comparison, the Mengele, Stalin, Torquemada, Beelzebub comparisons and all the rest. If it struts like a Nazi, talks like Nazi, tortures like a Nazi and wages aggressive and illegal war like a Nazi... it's not a duck.

Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a post comparing Bush, Cheney and the boys from PNAC to Hitler, to the Nazi hierarchy and to the wonderful folks who gave the world kristallnacht, the terror bombings of Guernica, of London and conducted history's magnum opus of human carnage, the holocaust, the destruction of two thirds of the Jews in Europe and millions of other "undesirables."

I took a moderate amount of heat for what one local (Dayton) commenter called my "classlessness," and received a few surly EMails from people who are probably, to this day, driving around with "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers on their Cadillac and Lexus SUVs but since I want so badly to be loved and admired, (or at least not ignored) I resolved to try to avoid using the "Hitler Comparison" after that.

I saw it used by others on the blogs and, guardedly, in the MSM, witnessed their reception of similar treatment and I realized that a taboo (see Godwin's law) had been created. "Disrespectful to the office of the President," some cried, "diminishes the horror of the holocaust and the brutality unleashed on Europe's Jews by the real Hitler," cried others, "the ultimate ad hominem attack," wrote one academic seeking to show that such comparisons were childish , demeaning to those who offered them and "kills dead," scholarly internet discussions.

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

Cluster B Personality Disorders

1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one's self and one's nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

I am sick to death of all the pussyfooting around the subject that has occupied the media for the duration of this premeditated, illegal war of terror that we the people of the United States have allowed to be waged against the people of Iraq, in our name, for the last several years.

No matter how much lipstick and rouge we smear on the face of this war no matter how we attempt to  dress up the evil and bestial acts that have been performed in its unholy name, it still has the hideous countenance of an evil swine from hell.

It is an illegal war, begun and conducted under false pretenses, by a group of criminal liars and thieves in the United States Government, abetted by a cowardly congress who abrogated their constitutional duties in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds and furthered by a complaisant press that ignored their obligation to remain independent from government, from their sponsors and report the facts. 

The members of the completely rogue executive department acted in their own self interest in a quest for personal power and wealth, in concert with the usual domestic and international corporate pirates who, in the depths of their insatiable greed, continually amplify human conflict to their own ends and bring poverty, war, suffering and death down upon the world.

There is no such animal as extraordinary rendition, nor do I know of the existence of any beasts called enhanced interrogation methods.

The first is kidnapping, it is illegal, a felony and the second word is torture, its meaning is clear:

NOUN:

  1. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
  2. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
  2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense.
  3. Something causing severe pain or anguish.

Torture is illegal in this country, a felonious act, it is illegal in the world at large, according to several conventions that we are legally bound by. Anyone committing torture, causing it to be committed, directing its commission, or training others in its techniques is guilty, guilty of war crimes, of crimes against humanity and crimes against "Nature's God.

The progress being made in our 4 1/2 year war of terror on Iraq is phenomenal. So impressive are our recent gains that the "top tier" Democratic candidates who have lined up in competition to become the heirs of this great struggle for freedom, for Middle Eastern democracy, for oil and gas rights for western corporations and of course for lucrative contracts in arms sales and private security for campaign contributors, last night went way out on a limb and declared their goal of removing our troops from the quagmire in Mesopotamia by the end of their first term in office in 2013.

Despite their boldness, they did not report whether or not they could guarantee the colonization of Mars, a cure for cancer, or flying pigs within that time frame.

Speculation is swirling about who will replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- everyone from Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch to former Solicitor General and Clinton stalker Theodore Olsen. Until last week, the name most bandied about was Secretary of Homeland Security and USAPATRIOT Act co-author Michael Chertoff. You'd think selecting Chertoff in light of the New Orleans debacle would be a stupid thing to do since Chertoff's continued ideological mishandling of the Katrina disaster borders on the criminally insane.

On Sunday, September 9 Senator Barbara Boxer, speaking on CNN, said, "70 percent of the Iraqis want the U.S. troops out of Iraq."

President Bush claims we are in Iraq to bring democracy and freedom.  However, the glaring hypocrisy of this claim is self-evident.  With the majority of Iraq's citizens wanting the U.S. occupying troops to leave, Bush chases around the world insisting that the U.S. is winning the war against the so-called enemy and the troops must stay to keep Iraq stable.  This would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

Remember Bush's finger pointing propaganda before the Iraq War about the axis of evil?  Evil is in the eye of the beholder.

In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on September 9, in a sidebar adjoining her regular column, D. Parvaz speaks of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the 355 prisoners being held there.  Recently there have been 385 flights or disturbances there.

An 80 plus year old veteran of two wars views Iraq's insurgency as freedom fighters and here is why.

Stanley O. Buckmaster of Bellingham, Washington minced no words in his letter published in the August 10 Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"Having survived an unjustified war and more than four years of occupation, I could not view any insurgent organization as just anything except `freedom fighters', just as we classified the French underground during world war Two when it resisted the German occupation of their country.  I am neither opposed to nor in favor of impeaching George Bush but I would like very much to see him tried as a war criminal (which he obviously is)."

David P. Barash, Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, in a column appearing in the Seattle Times August 10, makes some interesting observations regarding why Congress has failed to call a halt to Bush's Iraq War.  He puts it this way:

See You In September, With A Report We Wrote In July

In a story in the LA Times this morning "Top general may propose pullbacks" Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel report that Petraeus may announce pullbacks from some areas in Iraq, including al Anbar province and a turnover of those ares to Iraqi forces.

I'm somewhat mystified by this process as it appears that, at the White House, they seem to know already, in other words, today, what they are going to report in September, in other words, a month from today. In fact it seems that they began writing their "field report" weeks ago... in the White House.

I'm not sure why exactly, but this somehow reminds me of reports I hear from teachers with experience in the "no child left behind" follies, who have described to me the specter of spending weeks and weeks of classroom time devoted to "teaching to the test" in order to maintain mandated academic ratings and the flow of federal funds. Taking the test is mostly a charade, passing the test, a foregone conclusion, an exercise in making things look good on paper.

In other words, as Junior might say every few seconds, in the case of Iraq they are writing a "report" which will contain recommendations that will allow us to draw conclusions, that were decided on in the White House more than a month ago.

Did The Rooster Call Up the Sun or Did Rove Get the Last Laugh?
The only certainty my grasshoppers is that the cherry blossoms of spring will become the turd blossoms of summer

Karl Rove also known as "Turd Blossom" in that colorful native patois spoken by the Texas Chicken hawks announced today that he is leaving the rapidly sinking Scow of State that is the Bush administration effective the end of August.

His reason for leaving, taken verbatim from the official Washington departing rats exit speech is of course, to spend more time with his family.

When asked by one of the fully interchangeable talking heads of the White House press horde if he was being forced out, TB replied, "that sounds like the rooster calling up the sun" which I believe is another expression in that curious Pecos dialect that these birds use among themselves. Only Molly Ivins could decipher and translate the curious Texas Pig Latin these guys speak in private. I miss Molly.

Draftees At Drill Preparing For The War To End All Wars 1917

Lieutenant General Doug Lute, the "War Czar" known around the White House as the "General of least reluctance" is talking "Draft." Expressing his concern at the stress and strain of repeated lengthy deployments on the troops as well as their families the General said:

As an Army officer, this is a matter of real concern to me. Ultimately, the American army, and any other all-volunteer force, rests with the support and the morale and the willingness to serve demonstrated by our ? especially our young men and women in uniform. And I am concerned that those men and women and the families they represent are under stress as a result of repeated deployments.

General Lute, who accepted the position of War Czar after the rest of the General Staff either fled in stark terror at the prospect of accepting such a potentially career ending position or simply hid out in the Senior Officer's head in the Pentagon until the position was safely filled, did not actually use the "D" word, but, in response to questions from National Public Radio's Michele Norris on Friday in an interview for "All Things Considered" he definitely left the door wide open in this exchange:

During these wild and wooly days where an unelected chief executive serves as a neoconservative dictator intent on achieving a global New World Order and has excessively low poll ratings with seemingly no end in sight, his incredibly inept Democratic Party opposition continues to refuse to confront him.

A classic example occurred when yesterday's (July 24) New York Times reported that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, concerned that George W. Bush is playing politics with key legislation he threatens to veto, announced their intention to seek a meeting with him to resolve the impasse.

The article brought immediately to mind a term Jerry Brown used when he was California's governor, "planetary realism."  To request such a meeting with Bush at this time to resolve a legislative impasse flies in the face of planetary realism.

The article brought to mind as well that so frequently repeated film footage from 1940 showing a thoroughly flummoxed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain standing in the balcony of his residence at 10 Downing Street holding proudly aloft a piece of paper.