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5.6.09
Incidental #1,212

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 20:15 UTC on 5.6.09)

TALK ABOUT POTENTIALLY IMADMISSABLE LEGAL DEFENCES THAT THE COURTS ARE UNLIKELY TO BUY, even for The Pearl of Great Price: Witness what Richard A. Clarke had to suggest in an op-ed from last Sunday's Washington Post about certain prominent figures from His Fraudulency's Misadministration invoking what could best be called "9/11 Trauma" to excuse their trampling the Constitution underfoot to justify ur-RAHOWA on flimsy pretexts:

Top officials from the Bush administration have hit upon a revealing new theme as they retrospectively justify their national security policies. Call it the White House 9/11 trauma defense.

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America."

I remember that morning, too. Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president's national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president's office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room. Many of us thought that we might not leave the White House alive. I remember the next day, too, when smoke still rose from the Pentagon as I sat in my office in the White House compound, a gas mask on my desk. The streets of Washington were empty, except for the armored vehicles, and the skies were clear, except for the F-15s on patrol. Every scene from those days is seared into my memory. I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years--on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping--were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock--a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote--which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission--and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

The first response they discussed was invading Iraq. While the Pentagon was still burning, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld was in the White House suggesting an attack against Baghdad. Somehow the administration's leaders could not believe that al-Qaeda could have mounted such a devastating operation, so Iraqi involvement became the convenient explanation. Despite being told repeatedly that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, some, like Cheney, could not abandon the idea. Charles Duelfer of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group recently revealed in his book, "Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq," that high-level U.S. officials urged him to consider waterboarding specific Iraqi prisoners of war so that they could provide evidence of an Iraqi role in the terrorist attacks -- a request Duelfer refused. (A recent report indicates that the suggestion came from the vice president's office.) Nevertheless, the lack of evidence did not deter the administration from eventually invading Iraq--a move many senior Bush officials had wanted to make before 9/11. 

On detention, the Bush team leaped to the assumption that U.S. courts and prisons would not work. Before the terrorist attacks, the U.S. counterterrorism program of the 1990s had arrested al-Qaeda terrorists and others around the world and had a 100 percent conviction rate in the U.S. justice system. Yet the American system was abandoned, again as part of a pattern of immediately adopting the most extreme response available. Camps were established around the world, notably in Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners were held without being charged or tried. They became symbols of American overreach, held up as proof that al-Qaeda's anti-American propaganda was right.

Similarly, with regard to interrogation, administration officials conducted no meaningful professional analysis of which techniques worked and which did not. The FBI, which had successfully questioned al-Qaeda terrorists, was effectively excluded from interrogations. Instead, there was the immediate and unwarranted assumption that extreme measures--such as waterboarding one detainee 183 times--would be the most effective.

Finally, on wiretapping, rather than beef up the procedures available under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the administration again moved to the extreme, listening in on communications here at home without legal process. FISA did need some modification, but it also allowed for the quick issuance of court orders, as when President Clinton took stepped-up defensive measures in late 1999 under the heightened threat of the new millennium.

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001--but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques--but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

"I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities," Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration's response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

The possibility of which was not lost upon Jon "Daily Show" Stewart three days later on his Comedy Central show, as thus:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Dick (Uncut)
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political HumorEconomic Crisis

In any case, the "9/11 Trauma" defence is something the courts may want to study for possible legal precedence under both common and statute law vis-a-vis legal applicability, especially where those in positions of power, confidence and trust came into the equation.


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Incidental #1,211

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 17:45 UTC on 5.6.09)

SO MUCH FOR THE CLAIM AMONG CERTAIN DISREPUTABLE GOLD-COIN DEALERS that gold is "the only asset as is not someone else's liability" in their advertising of late suggesting gold as a "safe harbour" investment in the face of Clear and Present Danger of Major Socioeconomic Dislocation Within Measurable Distance.

As in the kind targeting especially unsophisticated, ignorant, easily-led and socioeconomically-dispossessed elements of the community (the Great Unwashed, by and large) by way of media outlets so catering.

Mein Innkeeper Friend offers this "food for thought," which I present in the vein of a commercial for a major gold dealer fond of using subtle scare tactics in their advertising: "Imagine you were in the middle of the desert, miles from civilisation ... and you were given the choice of ten pounds of gold [120 troy ounces; gold, along with other precious metals, is measured by troy weight, where 12 ounces make up a pound] and ten pounds of fresh water.

"Which would you choose?"

*************

THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN "STATES' RIGHTS" (AS PER THE TENTH AMENDMENT, UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION) vis-a-vis Federal socioeconomic stimulus funds may have had the last laugh with the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that only the South Carolina Legislature, and not Governor Mark Sanford, has the power to delegate authorisation for use of Federal stimulus funds so allocated.

(Remember that Governor Sanford wanted to use said stimulus funds allocated to The Palmetto State to refinance its outstanding debt, consistent with his hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief in the discredited "low taxes=jobs=social stability and order" platitude. And @ the expense of its schools, its roads, its infrastructure and its unemployed.)

Let it be hoped that someone in Columbia's corridors of power considers having Governor Sanford removed from office for mental incapacity and incompetence, as provided for in the relevant sections of the South Carolina Constitution.

*************

ONE OF THE WORST IDEAS CONSERVATIVES WOULD HAVE AS AN IDEAL HERO AND ROLE MODEL FOR "RIGHT-THINKING" AMERICAN YOUTH, especially so the sort being brainwashed through National Christian Homeschooling, to study and emulate would have to be Anthony Mozilo, founder and chairman of the now-disgraced "sub-prime/Alt-A" mortgage lender Countrywide Home Loans.

I say this in view of Mr. Mozilo's indictment by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of Wire Fraud Involving a Financial Institution, Defrauding and Misleading Shareholders, Submitting False Financial Statements and Insider Trading vis-a-vis Countrywide's operations in service to the warped ideology of His Fraudulency's Misadministration calling for a Classless Ownership Society targeting in particular the Lower Classes heretofore deemed "chronically and habitually dependent on State welfare" to the point of "developing unhealthy tendencies towards State socialism or other un-American beliefs" through State welfare's "subtle influence."

Thus does Anthonly Mozilo join the Capitalism with American Characteristics Hall of Shame and Disgrace, alongside such other discredited "heroes and role models for American Youth" as Samuel Insull, "Tiny" DeAngelis, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Bernard Madoff, Ivar Kreuger, Bernie Cornfeld, OPM Funding and ESM Government Securities, among other honourees.

*************

STEREOTYPES ARE, TO THE CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA MASHEEN, AN EFFECTIVE "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" TOOL when the Lower Classes and others easily-led are in the target audience ... and the stereotypes can be made all the more crudely negative.

One such being the notion of undischarged bankrupts (the fact of which affects their credit histories for ten years) being somehow "fiscally or morally irresponsible" Joe Sixpack types not showing a "healthy respect" for Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life rooted in poverty, fecundity and stupidity (or so the conservative platitude in this case would suggest), which has been deflated by a newly-released study showing that the vast majority of undischarged bankrupts are well-off middle class and better types with good educations and health insurance offered through their employer, yet wind up with substantial medical expenses thanks to high deductibles and/or co-payments, or having conditions not covered by insurance without first exhausting the deductible.

Which brings up the crudity of numerous offers by so-called "debt negotiation" and "debt settlement" companies theoretically having "secret, inside contacts" vis-a-vis creditors as would (in theory) help those with substantial debts lower them to the point of settlement for only pennies on the dollar, and without recourse to costly bankruptcy proceedings--for a price, it turns out (not to mention "advice" against further contact with creditors to--in theory--improve the likelihood of negotiations with creditors towards final settlement, to be regarded as payment in full; in fact, such "negotiations" are unlikely to take place, which causes creditors to refer past-due accounts to collection agencies, said creditors claiming not to have heard of the "debt settlement" company in question).

If tempted to fall for such "debt negotiation" offers by third-party channels, or get high-pressure solicitations therefrom, may I suggest instead talking with your creditors directly about an ur-Offer in Compromise, which you can easily do for the cost of letter postage to the Customer Service Department of your creditor(s) politely explaining your circumstances. (For helpful advice, visit this website beforehand.)

*************

MEANWHILE, IN ZIMBABWE, THE SITUATION UNDER ROBERT MUGABE'S OUTRIGHT STATE OF DICTATORSHIP HAS BECOME SO CRASS that a South African television crew last year found where Zimbabwean prisoners were suffering from the effects of malnutrition, starvation and disease thanks to the rampant hyperflation as political weapon, food shortages and wholesale corruption.

The which has since attracted the attention of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has begun to provide Zimbabwean prisoners with decent meals, blankets, soap and toiletries in the last few months; details of which have only now become made known in the media.

No wonder Mugabe's regime is in such desperate straits as they are....


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4.6.09
Incidental #1,210

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 20:30 UTC on 4.6.09)

IT MAY BE RATHER EARLY FOR INDECISION 2010 TO BE A MAJOR FACTOR IN THE NEWS, but if People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch has anything to say about it, such could be a major test of support for the ultra-right-wing Constitution Party in a mid-term campaign mostly dominated by Congressional and state races:

For years, whenever the Religious Right felt it was being under appreciated by the Republican Party, leaders would start hinting, and even sometimes openly threatening, that the socially conservative grassroots voters would utterly abandon the GOP for a third party during the next election cycle. 

Of course, that never happened and every time an election came around, the Right did what it could to mobilize in support of the Republican Party, despite all its earlier threats and whining. 

The one exception that I am aware of what back in 1996 when James Dobson cast a "protest vote" against the Bob Dole, the GOP's nominee, by voting for Howard Phillips, the nominee of the U.S. Taxpayer's Party (now known as the Constitution Party).

Since the Religious Right is always threatening to leave the GOP for a third party , it only makes sense that the Constitution Party would try to capitalize on the current discontent and start trying to woo disaffected "values voters" into its camp:

The fastest-growing third party in America, the Constitution Party, will discuss a nationwide effort to encourage Christians to vote "like their faith depended on it." The CP will host a number of notable values-oriented speakers at its Spring National Committee meeting June 12th and 13th at the Renaissance Newark Airport Hotel . The party will gather to discuss its unprecedented growth which coincides with widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Republican and Democratic parties. The Constitution Party, the only political party in America which is 100% pro-life is challenging all Believers to put an end to the "lesser of two evils" approach to voting.

"Christians must vote their values and leave the results to God," noted Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer adding, "Our country was founded on Biblical principles, that's why it was so blessed. Without returning to God's law, we cannot expect America to change for the better."

Outside of former Congressman/crackpot Virgil Goode, and professional conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, the event doesn't have any big name draws to speak of. 

Nonetheless, it'll be interesting to see if the Constitution Party's efforts to win over Christian voters will pay off, especially in light of the on-going tension between the GOP and its right-wing base.

But then again, the Constitution Party's obvious base of support is poor, undereducated or Christian homeschooled, socioeconomically-disaffected and easily-influenced "poor white trash" from Podunk Center, Doo Wah Diddy and the Park & Flush Trailer Park--spiritual cousins, so to speak, of hubris-laden Afrikanerdom who were basically conditioned to vote for the Afrikaner National Party consistently in "elections" during the South African apartheid regime's high carnival of power and corruption in the belief that the Afrikaner was forever being "persecuted" by the legacy of British rule (citing especially Die Voortrek and the Boer War), and that apartheid was its Last and Only Hope for the Afrikaner's Salvation.

The same "poor white trash" who can easily be duped into "giving until it hurts" for the "emergency evacuation" of the "once-proud and simple Afrikaner Peoples of South Africa in Clear and Present Danger and Risk of Persecution for their Race and Faith" based on flimsy "refugee" claims which are likely to raise alarm bells @ Immigration and Customs Enforcement vis-a-vis their sincerity, or want thereof, all the while not expected to realise that the funds so raised will be diverted @ the last minute to "more pressing and urgent needs" among such weird and unwholesome groups behind the campaign all along "for reasons you will understand," or so the official patsy will go.

*************

NO WONDER CONSERVATIVE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS ENJOY COOKING UP ALL MANNER OF RED HERRINGS, "STRAW MEN" AND AD HOMINEM ("TO THE MAN") BROMIDES to distract the attention of so-called "Real Americans" from The Big Picture and The Real Issues.

Case in point: Texas GOP Congressman Lamar Smith's announcing his launch of the so-called "Media Fairness Caucus," which, according to Think Progress (quoting NewsMax), will "point out unfair stories, meet with members of the media, and write op-eds and letters to the editor to highlight media bias," as if implying that "liberal media bias" posed as much a Clear and Present Danger to Our Antient and Peculiar Sovereignty and Sovereign Identity as a Peculiar Among the Nations as Creeping Communism or International Terrorism.

Unfortunately, as ConWebBlog (adjunct of ConWebWatch) points out in the following, conservatives are equally guilty of the same "media bias" they claim liberals have a presumed monopoly on:

Ronald Kessler's June 1 Newsmax column strangely praises the Washington Post for making "making an honest effort to be fair": "Hit jobs against Bush administration programs and Republicans in general have virtually vanished. Instead, the paper presents issues fairly. No longer is the other side suppressed or relegated to the last paragraph."

But Kessler offers no evidence that the Post ever did that in the first place. In fact, the evidence suggests that the Post has always had a soft spot for conservatives and their views. For example, in 2007 the Post published a fawning profile of right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin that glossed over her most controversial comments, and in 2006 published a similarly fawning profile of then-Fox News anchor Brit Hume.

Kessler cites another example of the Post's supposed change of heart: "On May 29, a Post editorial described Obama's budget, with its reliance on $9 trillion in borrowing during the next decade, as 'simply unaffordable.'" In fact, the Post has long shared numerous editorial positions with the decidedly conservative Wall Street Journal.

Kessler then goes on to defend Fox News: "Although Fox News prominently features conservative commentators, when it comes to news, the network has a rule that guests from opposing sides must appear on any partisan issue." Kessler offers no evidence that this rule actually exists--which is necessary because there's a decided lack of evidence that it's put into practice. As we've detailed, appearances on Fox News by employees of the conservative Media Research Center are typically solo or with like-minded conservatives, a nary a mention that the MRC is, in fact, conservative.

Kessler then disappears into disingenuous territory:

Regardless of one's politics, most people want to feel they are being exposed to all sides of an issue. That is one reason Newsmax.com has been so successful. With an average 4 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen Online, Newsmax is bigger than many news Web sites, including the Drudge Report. If ranked among the nation's top 10 newspaper Web sites, Newsmax would rank with leading brands such as The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. It is also one of the few Internet news sites to make a profit. Though it features conservative columnists and news angles that the rest of the media ignore, Newsmax prominently runs stories that are critical of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Note that term "news angles that the rest of the media ignore." In other words, Newsmax has a right-wing bias. Kessler just can't admit it to himself.

Kessler's claim that Newsmas is "critical of Democrats and Republicans alike" is dubious at best. In fact, Newsmax has been disproportionately criticial of Democrats, even going so far as to report outright falsehoods about President Obama's stimulus plan. Its columnists invent quotes to put in the mouths of Obama and his aides. And Kessler himself is guilty of distorted attacks on Obama and creepy obsequiousness toward conservatives.

Kessler further touts a claim--unsupported by evidence since Newsmax is privately owned by Richard Mellon Scaife and Christopher Ruddy and doesn't make its financial records public--that Newsmax is "one of the few Internet news sites to make a profit," suggesting that its supposed editorial balance is the reason for it. But it's not balanced, so that can't be the reason.

Of course, Kessler is on Newsmax's payroll, so he's more PR agent here than honest reporter. Of course he's not going to admit that Newsmax--and, by extension, Kessler himself--is hopelessly biased.

No wonder conservatives must have this fondness for projection in the psychiatric sense with the ulterior goal being one of protecting themselves from real or imagined scandal--especially if conservative media channels resort to "creative accounting" and/or offshore "pure trusts" structured solely "for tax reasons" (or so the official line hath it) to create the aura of prosperity when facts suggest otherwise.

And let's not forget where the apartheid South African regime, in its unease over "liberal media bias" making apartheid and its articles of faith look unfavourable (especially so the now-defunct Rand Daily Mail of Johannesburg, itself a notoriously harsh critic of apartheid's excesses as has since resurrected itself as the Mail and Guardian), secretly financed the launch of an alternative, conservative-leaning national daily gazetta by name of the Daily Citizen in 1974 (and tried to get away with it were it not for leaks to the outside world revealing the extent to which South African taxpayers were financing its operations).

Remember, boys and girls, what George Santayana said: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."


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Incidental #1,209

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 18:45 UTC on 4.6.09)

DO THE FOLLOWING REMARKS OF FORMER SENATOR RICK SANTORUM (AS QUOTED BY THINK PROGRESS) from Fox Prolefeed the other night reek of the condescendingly racist, with aspects of Archie Bunker/Alf Garnett-model crudity? (Emphasis supplied, know.)

And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock. Marriage is an institution that's a bridge too far for too many African-American woman and is not desirable among African-American males.

Here we have a president of the United States who says that marriage is cool. You have respect for your wife, and you treat her with the respect and dignity that she deserves. And she is part of this team. And it's not just part of professional team, but it's also part of a personal, romantic team. I think that's all great. So I think it's important that he keeps having his date night. [...]

I think he has to realize that flying to New York is…self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, is that it's with your wife.

And when you get right down to it, boys and girls, such mindsets could be on the same plane of ideological crudity as apartheid South Africa's using beer halls in the black and "coloured" (mixed-race) townships as a means of controlling "inferior" peoples making up the majority of the population @ the expense of what the regime saw as a "privileged as of right" White Christian minority (remember the opening scene in A Dry White Season where some black rabble-rowser in one such beer hall before the 1976 Soweto Riots points out that the proceeds from said beer halls are turned over to the South African police and military as an ur-"Patriot Fund" for whipping up armed insurrection?).

*************

THE TIMING COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE INTERESTING, EVEN FOR RIPLEY TO TAKE NOTE OF: On this the 20-year anniversary of the Chinese government taking sadistic measures against pro-democracy student demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square (the which has been closed off by guards as a "preemptive" measure of the sort Machiavelli on steroids and amphetamines would certainly endorse), President Obama used an address @ Cairo University to the Muslim peoples of the world and the Islamic faith generally in calling for a renewed, healthy dialogue between our "morally superior" United States (heretofore regarded as a White Low Church Christian Nation now, tomorrow and forever) and the Islamic community of the world somehow strained thanks to His Fraudulency's Misadministration provoking ur-RAHOWA Against International Terrorism to distract the attention of the Lower Classes in particular (as love to see themseves as "Real Americans," remember) and appeal to their honest and simple feelings of True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command for as long as required.

And it was His Fraudulency's Misadministration more than anything as helped sow mistrust of America in the Islamic world (and, in return, having their right-wing propaganda droogs whip up distrust of Islam and Muslims among "Real Americans" Who Should Know Better, as if hard-wired in their insistence of America always having been, and always forever being, a White Low Church Christian Nation, never mind such a mindset having clear and present danger for corruption, waste, fraud, mismanagement, abuse of power and Maschienpolitik being excused as "perfectly natural [and yet] moral"--and all the more worse when you have alcoholics, drug addicts, sex fiends and maniacs, gamblers, chronic and habitual spendthrifts and the emotionally-disturbed in positions of power, confidence and trust).

=============

AND SPEAKING OF HIS FRAUDULENCY'S MISADMINISTRATION AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS ACTS, DEEDS AND EXPLOITS upon our supposedly "morally superior" society and nation, Think Progress offers up the following transcript of an exchange between former Vice-President Cheney and Greta Van Susteren on Fox Prolefeed where the former Vice-President may have let slip An Inconvenient Truth which Fox Prolefeed's censors may have been ignoring all the while (emphasis added):

VAN SUSTEREN: On last question is on GM. We've spent an awful lot of money since last fall on GM to only have them end up in bankruptcy. Going back to last fall, would you have let them go into — or would you have pushed them into bankruptcy, do you think then, I mean, now that we've spent billions, or did you think that it was sort of a good idea to do what we've been doing?

CHENEY: Well, I thought that, eventually, the right outcome was going to be bankruptcy. They had to go through such a dramatic restructuring to have any chance of survival that they had to be able to renegotiate labor contracts, and so forth. And the president [His Fraudulency] decided that he did not want to be the one who pulled the plug just before he left office.

VAN SUSTEREN: Why?

CHENEY: Well, I think he felt, you know, these are big issues and he wouldn't be there through the process of managing it, but in effect, would have sort of pulled the plug on GM and that was one of the first crises the new administration would have to deal with. So he put together a package that tided GM over until the new administration had a chance to look at it, decide what they wanted to do.

VAN SUSTEREN: But it's cost us billions to get—I mean, you know–

CHENEY: It has.

VAN SUSTEREN: I mean–

CHENEY: And now the government–

VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, and we've now spent billions.

CHENEY: And now the government owns a big chunk of General Motors. That bothers me. I don't like having government own those kinds of major financial enterprises. I think it's—it does damage to our long-term economic prospects when we get government involved in making those kinds of decisions.

The private sector then I think will be very different, function differently, if it's full of government-owned enterprises, than would otherwise be the case.

Next thing you know, expect the John Bircher crowd to call for a Constitutional Amendment giving, in essence, the Mere Formality of Legal Recognition to Unwritten Custom and Tradition holding that the defence of Our Antient and Peculiar Sovereignty and Sovereign Identity is interconnected with that of a "morally superior" free-enterprise socioeconomic paradigm ("capitalism with American characteristics," as it were--as in "profit above all else," using the Lower Classes as corporatist guinea pigs, excusing reckless and utter disregard for Corporate Responsibility and Good Corporate Citizenship), and that the two must coexist "as of natural and inalienable right" "for mutual benefit."


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3.6.09
Incidental #1,208

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 19:00 UTC on 3.6.09)

THE OLD COLLOQUIALISM THAT "GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE" COULD BE EQUALLY APPLICABLE to right-wing propagandists, especially the sort who specialise in "winning of hearts and minds" among especially the Great Unwashed in Podunk Center, Doo Wah Diddy and the Park & Flush Trailer Park, to cite the more obvious examples of "poor white trash" hubris made flesh.

Case in point, from the ConWebBlog adjunct of ConWebWatch:

One of the stranger sights we've seen lately is right-wingers' embrace of "news" sources, no matter how dubious, that reflect its preferred talking points--as illustrated by the ConWeb's embrace of an editorial on global warming published by a 9/11 truther on the Russian Pravda website.

That spectacle repeats itself in a June 2 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas that follows other right-wing media in embracing a Pravda website opinion piece lamenting "the American decent [sic] into Marxism."

Lucas claimed that the piece was "published in the once-official newspaper of the Soviet Union"; in fact, Pravda.ru, where the opinion piece appeared, is largely separate from the Pravda newspaper, with the website taking a much more sensationalist and nationalist approach.

Lucas fails to make note of the overall hateful tone of the opinion piece. For instance, it refers Rep. Barney Frank as "Senator Barney Franks [sic], a social pervert basking in his homosexuality." Moreover, the author of the piece has also attacked America as "a democracy where the rights of the minority, such as the homosexuals and Muslims, routinely trumps the rights of the Christian majority, who are viewed by the elites as a vast unwashed, ignorant economic unit to be taxed as needed, bled for the right causes ... in foreign wars and socially experimented on, at the elites' whim."

Are those sentiments Lucas and CNS endorse as well?

No wonder the right-wing media is as weighted with hubris as it is, not to mention a warped delusion of journalism being "the means which justifies the ends," no matter how vitriolic, crass or disrespectful for truth it has to be.

Remember Der Sturmer, as per one Julius Streicher back in Nazi Germany? (You know--the lurid and stereotypical depictions of Jews as filthy, perverted, greedy, sex-crazed; the whole lot ... cartoons depicting "Aryan" womanhood "under mortal danger" by Jews in the guise of snakes, rats and other vermin ... the motto @ the bottom of the front page warning that [in translation] THE JEW IS OUR MISFORTUNE!, not to mention the nameplate insisting they were "Germany's Weekly Newspaper in the Fight for Truth," notwithstanding an overzealously sensationalist tone bordering on the pornographic throughout ... Hitler himself admitting that it was the one weekly gazetta he read especially thoroughly, front page to back, and even a number of prominent Nazi Party leaders endorsing it as "essential" to the Peoples' Understanding of the Jewish Question....)

*************

CONSIDERING CONSERVATIVE ARTICLES OF FAITH FOREVER SEEING THE LOWER CLASSES AS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE PREVAILING ORDER, you could just imagine them coming up with rather tasteless concepts galore by which to keep Kankerdom all the more pacified and in line long enough to keep their mouths shut and not "develop unhealthy interests in politics," among other Social Evils in the Conservative Playbook.

One especially likely such (though they don't want to acknowledge as much openly, For Obvious Reasons): A series of generically-packaged Adult Sex Videos priced ridiculously low to better attract the Lower Classes all the more, the sort lacking any sort of underlying plot, story or production values (as in little more than random sexual scenes, especially the sort where the "money shot" is drawn out to the point of unhealthy or obnoxiously unnecessary prominence); on occasion, such videos would likely include scenes of animal mating, bestiality, even pedophilia, "just to liven things up a bit," or so things will be explained internally, interspersed @ random.

And the background music being a rather bad insturmental arrangement of "Je t'aime ... moi non plus" which unintentionally becomes grating on the ears of Kankerdom reduced to so watching.


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Incidental #1,207

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 18:00 UTC on 3.6.09)

ONE THING ANTI-ABORTIONISTS DON'T WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE AS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH, @ LEAST FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION, is their implementing the same "pro-life" policies as Romanian Communist-era majordomo Nicolae Ceauçescu as mandated @ least five children for all married couples and monthly gynecological testing for pregnant women as included bromide-laden reminders that what they were doing was for the Greater Glory of Socialism, and that if they didn't want to take care of the infant, there were always State orphanages available.

That, and their unwillingness to openly acknowledge their regarding the aforementioned Ceauçescu as a Hero and Role Model Worthy of Study and Emulation Among Right-Thinking "Real Americans" (largely poor, undereducated or homeschooled, socioeconomically displaced and easily influenced) on the same level as Eric Rudolph and Randall "Operation Rescue" Terry.

This I bring up in view of today's edition of The Progress Report from the Center for American Progress having as its lead article that entitled "Tiller's Killers," about Extreme Right reaction and invective vis-a-vis the weekend murder of Wichita abortionist Dr. George Tiller:

The issues of abortion and domestic extremism have been thrust back into the national spotlight with the brutal murder of Dr. George Tiller. The Kansas doctor had "long been the most prominent target of anti-abortion activists in this country due to the fact that he was one of the few physicians in the country willing to perform 'late-term' abortions." On May 31, a 51-year old man named Scott Roeder allegedly shot Tiller "as he stood in the foyer of his church." Tiller had already survived being shot in both arms by another radical in 1993. In 1986, his clinic was bombed, and in 1991, it was blockaded. Tiller had to be protected by federal marshals and his clinic was fortified by bulletproof glass and security guards. Unfortunately, Tiller is far from the only victim of extremist violence. There have been "more than 6,100 acts of violence against abortion providers in the United States and Canada since 1977," and four doctors have been killed. Many of the anti-choice groups that have spent years fomenting hatred against Tiller rushed out condemnations of Roeder's actions. But as Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star wrote, "His accomplices know they have blood on their hands, which might explain why they were quick to issue statements...expressing disapproval of Tiller's murder."

WOMEN'S LAST RESORT: First of all, it's important to understand that the abortions Tiller provided were legal. In fact, his murder came just two months after he was found not guilty of performing illegal late-term abortions. But his right-wing critics portrayed him as a killer, eager to "execute" babies. "Dr. George Tiller destroys fetuses for just about any reason, right up until the birth date," said Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Last night, O'Reilly criticized the practice of late-term abortions--which usually occur in the third trimester, at 24 weeks--saying that women could choose the procedure if they simply had a "headache." Will Saletan of Slate has claimed that "there are cases where there's no real medical situation other than some teenager in denial." Women, however, do not choose this procedure willy-nilly. Just one percent of all abortions in the United States occur after 21 weeks, and very few doctors provide this service. Additionally, most states have strict restrictions on when a woman is allowed to undergo the procedure. As Jessica Arons, Director of the Center for American Progress's Women's Health and Rights Program, has stated, "Although his [Tiller's] chosen profession of providing mid- and late-term abortions was one some found distasteful, he remained committed to his calling to serve women in their greatest hour of need." Indeed, testimonials from Tiller's patients have shown that he was often a woman's last--and only--resort when she had to make the excruciating decision to terminate a pregnancy for reasons such as her health or congenital defects.

HATEFUL EXTREMISM: Many anti-choice groups quickly denounced Roeder's actions. The group 40 Days of Life said that it was "shocked and dismayed" and Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, issued a statement saying, "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act." But as Hendricks wrote, Operation Rescue couldn't have been "shocked" by Tiller's death. After all, it was that group that coined the name "Tiller the Killer" and "spent decades fomenting hate toward a man who simply believed that he was serving a purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country performing late-term abortions." In fact, veteran anti-abortion activist Randall Terry--who founded Operation Rescue--issued a statement calling Tiller a "mass murderer," adding that he was an "evil man" whose "hands were covered with blood." Roeder, in fact, had been an active member of the Operation Rescue community and used the group as a platform for his vigilantism. (Authorities found a Post-It note with the group's phone number in his car after the shooting.) In May 2007, Operation Rescue organized a "77-hour round the clock prayer vigil" in Wichita, KS, Tiller's hometown. On May 19, Roeder commented on an online forum for the event, chillingly urging Operation Rescue members to take the fight inside Tiller's church. On Sept. 3, 2007, Roeder stepped up his rhetoric on another Operation Rescue site, writing, "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement [sic] upon our nation." Newman later issued another statement stressing that "Scott Roeder has never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue."

O'REILLY'S 'FACTS': One of the most prominent media voices attacking Tiller has been O'Reilly. According to Salon, O'Reilly first discussed Tiller on Feb. 25, 2005, and followed it up with 28 more episodes that mentioned the doctor. In the past four years, O'Reilly has frequently described the doctor as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and "a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida." "And if the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now, Governor [Kathleen] Sebelius," said O'Reilly on one of his shows. On Monday, O'Reilly made his first public comments on Tiller's murder. Although he briefly said that "Americans should condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller," O'Reilly then segued into more attacks on Tiller. He also used the opportunity to attack his critics, saying they were trying to "exploit" the incident to attack Fox News. "No backpedaling here. ... Unlike you, I report honestly," said O'Reilly. "Every single thing we said about Tiller was true, and my analysis was based on those facts." Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz criticized O'Reilly for his segment, saying that he was "surprised that, along with his reminder that Tiller had been called a baby killer, O'Reilly didn't issue a ringing denunciation of the shooting and anyone who thought it was justified. The occasion, in my view, called for it; he chose a different approach."

In any event, Your Correspondent feels it was about time:
  • for the anti-abortionists to acknowledge their being, in effect, a Secret Admiration Society for Nicolae Ceauçescu and the anti-abortion policies of his Communist regime in Romania (1966-1989), notwithstanding the ulterior motive here being one of Hastening the Final Onset and Perfection of Pure Socialism;
  • for the same element to stop playing doublethink and acknowledge, in no uncertain terms--in plain English, as it were--the old proverb that "words have consequences" applying in the wake of recent events, rather than their continuing to use platitudes just to avoid scandal; and
  • for Mr. "No-Spin Zone" (or so he wants himself presented to his audience of, by and large, Kankerdom) to accept responsibility, liability and culpability, preferably on his show, and from his very lips, for such comments as triggered Scott Roeder's infamous acts, deeds and exploits. (The same could be said for Roger Ailes and, in a way, Keith Rupert Murdoch, themselves equally liable by extension per the News America Corporation chain of command.)
So what stands in the way otherwise?

*************

NEWS SURE TO BE EXPLOITED BY CONSERVATIVE "FAMILY VALUES" TYPES WITH HYPED-UP SENSATIONALISM in their ongoing campaign to whip up opposition for Federal and/or State day-care funding:

The owners of a highly-reputable day-care centre in North Carolina have been found to be selling illicit moonshine from the same premi as the day-care centre on the side (as if looking to earn some extra income as could cross-subsidise the day care centre, methinks).

In any event, these developments could be grounds enough for revocation of the day-care licence because of Moral Turpitude (as in illegal liquor sales).

*************

NO DOUBT YOU MAY STILL RECALL THE HEADLINES GENERATED WHEN SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA, howbeit when he was still leader of the African National Congress (ANC), was "shocked and appalled" that whites could be reduced to living in poverty after visiting a white slum in Bethlehem township near Pretoria ... especially considering where apartheid-era propaganda forever insisted that the "privileged" and "morally superior" whites were "morally and racially incapable" of reducing themselves to the same depths of poverty which the regime forced the "inferior" blacks and "coloureds" (those of mixed race) into.

Not to mention the motivation for the assaination by stabbing of then-President Hendrik Verword in 1966 being one of unease over apartheid-regime policies failing to address the lot of poor, undereducated and easily-influenced (and yet "privileged") whites, especially of the Afrikaner derivation.

In any event, South African President Zuma's first State of the Nation Address to Parliament in the Union Buildings, Pretoria, held earlier today, called for creating 500,000 jobs (mostly in public-works projects) to help deal with the crushing and dehumanising effects of poverty in post-apartheid South Africa, especially so in light of the current global socioeconomic situation making matters likely to be worse without timely intervention. And with The New South Africa being seen as the Rainbow Nation, such jobs should be assigned equally and without due regard to race or colour (including the same specimens of poor whites which shocked Mr. Zuma back in Bethlehem).

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2.6.09
Incidental #1,206

(as posted by iludiumphosdex @ 22:00 UTC on 2.6.09)

WITH MINNESOTA GOVERNOR TIM PAWLENTY ANNOUNCING HIS NOT SEEKING A THIRD TERM IN OFFICE IN INDECISION 2010, The Gopher State will doubtless be washing its hands of a major disgrace to her good name and repute.

One which has attached itself too much to K Street and their droogs among "the Four Hundred" @ the expense of the so-called "Fundamentals of the Economy" (as in the Lower Working Classes), thanks to Governor Pawlenty's hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief in the flawed and discredited "low taxes=jobs=social stability and order" mentality which the so-called "Club For Growth" has been especially fond of perpetuating.

In any event, this will be one governor's race which the Secular-Progressive element will especially want to pull out all the stops in ensuring sure victory--especially with the GOP still in uncertain territory vis-a-vis its future ideological direction as much as its finances.

=============

AND SPEAKING OF THE WHOLE IDEA ABOUT "LOW TAXES=JOBS=SOCIAL STABILITY AND ORDER" CONSERVATIVES HOLD DEAR AS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH, such, it turns out, may carry some fatal flaws unbeknownst to its most ardent believers who can't accept the idea of its being discredited.

For one, such expects so-called "Essential Industry" (unskilled manufacturing especially) to remain labour-intensive all the more, especially through tax disincentives against new plant and equipment as could translate into "major job losses" translating into "idleness" and "danger of hooliganism;" ergo, keeping outdated equipment and processes all the more viable "to protect essential jobs" towards a theoretical nil unemployment rate--even if it means cannibalising older equipment for parts in service to such a warped "industrial heritage" agenda.

For another, the whole idea that a theoretical nil rate of unemployment will magically keep tax revenue steady and consistent @ arbitrarily-low rates thereof fails to consider the fact that many lower- and middle-income "Fundamentals" wind up getting withholding taxes clawbacked, @ least in substantial part; that, and their also paying sales, excise, fuel and franchise taxes.

For still another, you have the rather obvious one of how to make up for lost revenue to the State while keeping taxes all the lower in the name of creating jobs which, in its turn, translates into social order (not unlike the "Asian Values" mentality Singapore likes promoting to explain its prudish mindset).

Can we please have logical answers to especially that last point?

*************

SOMETHING FOR RACISTS, WHITE CHRISTIAN SUPREMACISTS AND OTHERS CALLING THEMSELVES "PATRIOTS" TO PONDER, especially if they have relatives who served and died in the European Theater of Operations during World War II in defeating the Nazi regime in Germany and its designs on an "Aryan Master Race" ensuring the continuity of the Thousand-Year Reich and a New Golden Age for Germany after her "stab in the back" following World War I:

By your acts, deeds and exploits in, and your calling for, racist and white-supremacist articles of faith, don't you realise that you may be trivialising, even desecrating, the memory of those who succeeded in defeating the evil and sadistic designs of Adolf Hitler (himself a paranoid megalomaniac whose being blinded in a poison gas attack in World War I may have only shaped his delusions all the more)?

The evil and sadistic designs which saw not just Jews, but also Roma (gypsies), the Russo-Slavic peoples, Jehovah's Witnesses (known to the Europeans as "Bible Students"), the physically- and mentally-disabled (including such as were disabled by war) and homosexuals as "sub-human***life unworthy of life" whose presence was to be regarded as "a wasteful and needless burden upon the good taxpayers" and, hence, needed to be put out of their misery (in Nazi thinking)?

The evil and sadistic designs which justified outright bastardy in the name of "perfecting the Aryan Master Race" and increasing its numbers to a point where the Nazi regime's continued stability was theoretically assured--including by way of "campouts" involving the Hitler Youth and League of German Maidens in close proximity to each other? (The same line of thought held marriage to be "outdated and archaic" vis-a-vis "racial perfection," although those desiring the mere formality of its sanctity could still be "married" as per a Nazi-centric formula.)

The evil and sadistic designs which justified young and even impressionable children, not to mention the lower elements, being exposed to quasi-pornographic materials in the interest of whipping up anti-Semitic feelings for the sake of "national and racial honour"?

The evil and sadistic designs which saw the aforementioned specimens of "life unworthy of life" being "productive" as slave labourers or guinea pigs in "medical experiments" of dubious legitimate value?

The evil and sadistic designs which expected children to turn against their parents as one with "national duty," in effect being pawns of the State and its campaigns of sadism and ultraviolence thanks to a fanaticism instilled by way of the Hitler Youth movement (and its girls' branch, the League of German Maidens)?

The evil and sadistic designs seeing women's role and place confined to a trinity of Kirche, Kuche, Kinder ("Church, Kitchen, Children") even the Religiopolitical Right in our "morally superior" United States would look upon as "Traditional Values," reinforced by the League of German Maidens and its "finishing school" of sorts, Glaube und Schoenheit (Faith and Beauty)?

The evil and sadistic designs which expected especially fecund specimens of German motherhood, legitimate and otherwise, to be shown Due Respect and Honour through the agency of the Honour Cross of the German Mother (especially so such in the Hitler Youth)?

The evil and sadistic designs which sought to replace "archaic, superstitious and outdated" Christian teachings with an alternative "faith movement" rooted in Nordic paganism and using Hitler's Mein Kampf as its Holy and Sacred Text?

The evil and sadistic designs in which the Self was expected to become subordinate to a Greater Collective Will "by whatever means necessary," including the Kraft durch Frude (Strength Through Joy) programme of organised cultural and leisure activities available @ nominal cost, intended primarily to pacify the working-classes into accepting Nazi beliefs as one with "labour discipline" without question or reservation? (One needs to consider, too, that the Kraft durch Frude was financed through payroll deductions, whether one participated in its activities or not.)

The evil and sadistic designs fuelled more than likely by insanity, drug addiction, involvement in the Forbidden Arts, veneral disease, "sexual perversions" and other examples of personal misadventure which could be used to fuel delusions of grandeur, unaware such could only open the doors to corruption and abuse of power?

The evil and sadistic designs that not only the United States, but also our allies among the British, the Free French, even the then-Soviet Union, challenged and repulsed as a united force against the excesses of tyranny and inhumane cruelty?

All in all:

Have you no shame, no remorse?

"Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, @ long last? Have you left no sense of Decency?"

Have you no regard for those who fought and died to defeat such a dangerous madman as Hitler and his racist designs which could have unwittingly carried the risk of genetic harm in the name of "perfecting" an "Aryan Master Race"?

And yet you call yourselves "True Americans" and "patriots" all the while, unaware of past misadventures towards such aims you now seek the final perfection thereof!

So don't come crying to me, especially if you're maudlin drunk, having read this far; you got yourself into your own sorry state of affairs, and only you can undo yourself thereof. As George Santayana put it, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."


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