General Smedley Butler, U.S. Marine Corps (most decorated Marine in US history):

I helped make Mexico, and especially Tempico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

* * * *

The principle of privatization has metastasized in Iraq. It's at least as bad as the fictitious "M&M Enterprises" from Catch 22.

All this hot air in the newspapers about who lied and who really bought the lie is irrelevant, and editorializing just obfuscates the fact the poor, deprived people of Iraq have been put in a blender and left to puree. After years of brutal sanctions (any idiot can see that after 18 months, the bottom-dwellers in charge will start playing the system and the weight of sanctions will fall solely on the unfortunate people) and three years of violent occupation the Iraqi people are worse off than they ever were. Meanwhile, a couple of thousand US mother's sons and daughters have been killed, along with 50K or more Iraqi civilians, and the deaths just keep on mounting.

So what if George Bush led us into war because he needed to prove to his mom that he was a better man than his father? So what if the twin doomsters, Cheney and Rumsfeld, have been a textbook example of duplicity and incompetence? The only thing that matters is ending the Iraq war debacle.

This war was Dick and Rummy's Excellent Adventure, and not only has it gone sour, but it never could have worked. Their real objective was to clean out the political rat's nest of the Middle East, starting with the low hanging fruit, Iraq, and working their way through Syria and Iran. For crying out loud, Rice is still talking up a campaign into those countries!

The goal was to provide stability for the future flow of oil, but the joke is that China will take 'our' oil in any case. Every day we put more of our money in China's coffers via the great Big Box Chinese Outlet Store. Eventually, China will have so many of our dollars in hand that we will have to watch with our noses pressed against the glass while they soak up all the oil. According to Gore Vidal -and he's usually right- our only recourse in the future will be to grow China's rice.

Let's leave George W. alone to seek therapy, Cheney to move into a cabin ala the Unabomber, Rumsfeld to a padded room, the Republican Congress to wear their corporation T-shirts, the Lieber-crats to kiss up to business while pretending to be for working people, all the parasitic pundits to a deep, deep hole in the ground, and just get the hell out of Iraq, ASAP.

We can use the time saved to go shopping at Mao-Mart and learn how to grow rice hydroponically.

The average person thinks the latest budget cuts go after the poor, not them, so "Who cares?" Here's news: with the undoing of the New Deal, YOU are tomorrow's poor, so you and your children will get shafted next.

Here's another fact: you are not "middle class", never were. You are merely a well paid worker, and that's changing fast.

If you work for wages, you are not a capitalist, and you are soon to be on the outside looking in. Just because you have good credit and a well paying job doesn't make you invulnerable. A cliché that will come to haunt you: what goes around come around.

NSA = KGB = Stasi = Gestapo.

Too many let politicians beguile them with moral sideshows and other wedge issues while fat cats steal America. Too many disparage unions and forget that we, the ordinary working schmoes, must either recognize we're all in this together or else be crushed under the corporate wheel like mice. People need to smarten up, fast.

Where do Republicans get off calling Democrats who have served in battle "cowards" for merely questioning the efficacy of the Bush Administration's preemptive war in Iraq? Most of the big shot neo-cons are chicken-hawks anyway, having gotten as many as four or five deferments during Vietnam to avoid serving. Plus, the male Republican Congressmen fronted a woman, freshman Jean Schmidt, to deliver their most offensive personal attack against a Democratic Veteran. Where do these Pusillanimous Republicans get off calling veteran Democratic Congressmen "cowards"!

hypothesis: there is a superior market solution to everything.

corollary: the only legitimate function of government is defense.

why make the exception in the corollary, can't even war be prosecuted better on the profit incentive? if not, why not? 

on the other hand, if defense has to remain a public function, can't the arguments for its being so be applied to other functions of the commonwealth? where do you draw the line?

the hypothesis doesn't stand if there is a single exception. it's as much folly to introduce profit motive into things central to the public interest --which can be done more fairly and efficiently by government-- as it is to do publicly things that are driven by individual choice that can be served better in the competitive market. 

the dividing line is between common interests and individual preferences. regulation of private utilities or public ownership of utilities makes sense, just as a free market for consumer goods does. there's a balance, and it's not tilted so far to one side that the only legitimate function of government is war. that's as crazy as a counter-argument that the only thing legitimately served by the free market is designer dog houses.

Sad to watch a country born in revolution perish in a cat's fart of complacency.

The human race is on the ascent. Every day we make new discoveries that enhance our understanding of how our universe functions, and this in turn shows us how to better manipulate our environment to improve our way of living.

Bull.

Simultaneous with our splitting the atom, we were separating mothers from their children, parsing out the small and the weak to be crudely asphyxiated with an insecticide in sealed chambers. Currently, children in the first world lust and pine for technological trinkets while their third world counterparts die by the thousands every day from malaria. Even in the land of plenty, many live in opulence while many more abide with rotting teeth, poverty, and unremitting insecurity.

The difference between the technologically possible and the actual is so dismaying that too many have retreated into the arbitrary absolutes of bad religion, spurning science and knowledge.

To continue to use the earth's finite resources in a profligate way, the world's sole superpower ignores logic and pretends it can perpetuate an unsupportable status quo through force. A powerful elite champions this folly, knowing the futility but nonetheless committed to profiting from the pursuit.

And this brings us to the crux of the problem. Men's narcissism trumps intelligence or honor, so that short-term gain for the few eclipses the long-term interests of all of mankind. As Edwin Arlington Robinson said in his poem, Cassandra, "You have the ages for your guide, but not the wisdom to be led."

After being run out of Massachusetts, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island. He learned to speak the native languages, and didn’t buy into the racism of his peers. He maintained settlers had no legal right to take native lands without compensation. 

This countered the English claim the natives had no concept of property and therefore need not be reimbursed. The enlightened Williams argued that the natives actually did own property, only as a tribe, not individually; hence,  the settlers' land grabbing was wrong. This was an inconvenient point of view for the settlers, of course.

He also believed in the separation of church and state, which was unheard of for his time. As a minister he believed people could improve themselves through religion, but only if they wanted to. He thought people were fundamentally evil, and he recognized  government was necessary to keep the unsaved and unrepentant from killing God-fearing people as well as each other. He saw religion and government as serving different purposes and realized they couldn't be combined. 

He believed in freedom of worship. The first synagogue in the colonies was built in R.I. while Roger Williams was governor. 

It’s nice to reflect  that while a preponderance of leadership roles throughout history have been filled by narcissists, the case of Roger Williams shows it’s possible to be otherwise and still leave an enduring mark.

Problem: torture is legal; the FBI can read anyone's mail or e-mail without asking a judge, informing anyone, or justifying it to any outside body; food an medicine for the needy -many of whom were yesterday's middle class- has been cut; wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few to a greater degree than in any other industrialized country, and the laws are being changed to accelerate and codify that; upward mobility is now half that of Europe; student grants are becoming passé; religious fundamentalists have infiltrated government; the healthcare system is tanking; we are mired in a war that was to be a prelude to more wars; the biggest employer in the world is a Chinese outlet store that systematically screws its workers; China owns more and more of our debt; public radio and television are being converted into propaganda outlets for the neo-conservative, corporatist government. 

Solution: watch football on the LCD big screen TV (made in China) and drink cases of Bud!

The character of this government will not change with the removal of DeLay from his position as majority leader. It will continue operating as a one party system. The Republican run government does not now and will not share power, will not indulge in accommodation or compromise, and will continue to exclude elected Democrats from any meaningful aspect of governing. Their standard is "winner take all, take no prisoners".

While Democrats may be allowed to speak during early stages of legislation, their participation is not tolerated beyond that point. In the end, legislation is written by corporate Republican lobbyists, then pushed for a vote without Democrats having a chance to examine it.

It really doesn't matter anyway because the GOP has enough votes to pass legislation on its own. It is the majority, its members are highly disciplined, and they would not dare to vote other than how they are told to. The Democrats' votes can't change the outcome, so they may as well stay home.

Perhaps this is inevitable when one political party controls all branches of government. Perhaps also, this is a direct consequence of the Republican Party's philosophy of absolutism. In any case, the inevitable outcome of this kind of thuggery is totalitarianism.

Nine bucks an hour ($360/week before taxes) was too much to pay New Orleans locals to do construction work, so His Excellency suspended the Davis-Bacon laws to let contractors hire cheap immigrant labor at minimum wage. This will help in the reconstruction of New Orleans by allowing corporations like Halliburton to charge the taxpayer top dollar and keep the difference.

Simultaneously, the congressional majority blocked debate on excluding hurricane victims from the new, tougher bankruptcy rules enacted under “reform”. All this shows there are more ways to put it to people than just starving them and imposing thirst.

By the way, if His Excellency isn’t going to increase rich people’s taxes to previous levels to pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast, where’s it going to come from? He says the money will come from cuts in unnecessary spending. My question is, what spending? Will He nix the half billion dollars for “bridges to nowhere” in Alaska, or is His Excellency eying levees somewhere other than New Orleans to shortchange?

Once again, the irrepressible Republican Congress is poised to turn lemons into lemonade. They are about to propose throwing out environmental rules wholesale and selling off vast public lands so that energy companies can reap more profits, and they are doing this under the guise of relieving gas shortages caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The ordinary citizen will realize little if any relief from high gasoline prices as a result, but the energy giants will see a windfall. The side effects will be unhealthier air, more polluted water, contaminated food, and a decimation of America's legacy of public lands.

George Bush has announced he's going to overhaul FEMA and it's parent, Homeland Security, in the wake of the hurricane Katrina debacle. What he really intends to do is use his own appointees' failure as an excuse to root out government unions and further privatize to make his cronies richer. He may be brain damaged from booze and cocaine, but he sure has chutzpah.

For over a decade, the ad hominem argument has been the preeminent tool of public persuasion. If a political operative or pundit doesn’t like what someone else is saying, he merely attempts to denigrate and defame that person rather than address his or her ideas. Mudslinging has become the preferred weapon in the war for political hegemony.

Why is attacking the person rather than trying to refute their ideas wrong? The reason is this: it’s an intellectual bait-and-switch. It's used to sell you something other than what you thought you were getting.

Why do politicos use the ad hominem argument? Because they figure your inflamed emotions are more powerful than any logical argument they can muster against something, so they appeal to your fears and hatred and hope the real issue will be overlooked in the melee.

This generally works. Emotion trumps reason. They wave a red flag in front of you rather than use persuasion because they have a weak case and they think you have a weak mind.

The most recent example of this is the right wing’s attack on Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq. She kept vigil outside the president’s erstwhile pig farm in Crawford, Texas  to ask Bush face-to-face what her son died for. The president himself has said there is no evidence Saddam Hussein had any connection with the 9/11 attack, and furthermore, there were no WMD. Given this and the price she has paid, it’s a fair, if embarrassing, question.

Since the right wing attack machine cannot answer this question any more than the president can, they have selected their most trusted weapon, the ad hominum argument. They say Cindy Sheehan is either a communist or a communist dupe and that she is undermining the security of the troops. They say she is aiding the terrorists. They claim she’s an anti-Semite. They say she dishonors her son, that she is using his death to seek the limelight. They do all this because they cannot answer her question and because the public will fall once more for their ad hominum bait-and-switch.

Reporters Without Borders annually ranks countries according to press freedom; this year the US dropped to 44th from the top -between Macedonia and Bolivia. Let freedom clank!

Suburban theme song, Little Boxes, written by Malvina Reynolds. [629K bytes audio, (.au)].

continue >>