HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE


BUSH'S DAYS OF INFAMY

President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called December 7, 1941, "a day that will live in infamy." But George W. Bush and his gang of criminal confederates contributed several days of infamy to our history.

The Supreme Court created the first day of infamy when they used twisted and fallacious reasoning to hand the presidency to Bush, who lost the popular vote, and who undoubtedly lost the vote in the pivotal state of Florida.

The second day of infamy was when Bush was sworn in as President. Bush stood there on that day and swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He spent the next eight years doing exactly the opposite.

A third day of infamy was September 11, 2001, when, due to the Bush administration's abject incompetence, terrorists launched successful attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington, D. C.

The fourth day of infamy was when an attack was launched on Iraq, a country that was no threat to us and had nothing to do with 9/11.

Robert Parry takes a look at the day Bush was sworn in as president and how the major media ignored the outrage felt by so many Americans. This excerpt is at www.consortiumnews.com:

But other Americans believed January 20, 2001, was a day of infamy for the American Republic. It was the first time in 112 years that a popular-vote loser was to be installed as President of the United States – and then only after he engineered an unprecedented intervention by political allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Five Republican justices had stopped the vote count in the swing state of Florida, where Bush’s brother, Jeb, was governor and other Bush loyalists oversaw the election, which then was awarded to Bush by 537 votes out of six million ballots cast.

So, on that cold January day, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Washington, D.C., shouting angry slogans and waving handwritten anti-Bush signs.

The protesters were convinced that Bush had stolen the presidential election and, in so doing, had disenfranchised the plurality of citizens who had cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore.

Some signs were addressed directly to Bush. “You’re not my President,” read one. “I know you lost,” said another. One sign had just two large letters, “NO.” To these Americans, Bush’s ascension to the nation’s highest office was a travesty of democracy.

Where we stood, the protesters, many in dark-colored parkas and ski or baseball caps, outnumbered the elegantly attired Republicans.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

Fresno, the Very Model of Reaganomics

This is a commentary about a recent workplace shooting here in good old conservative Fresno. This is the place where a reactionary radio station, KMJ, fired a weatherman because he predicted there might be rain during the annual Rush Limbaugh picnic. This is the place where you read daily attacks against President Obama and liberals in the letters page of The Fresno Bee. The letters tend to parrot neonazis like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and Beck.

This is the place where a Republican ex-mayor, Alan Autry, has been running highly deceptive ads trying to place water woes on environmentalists. Autry's major claim to fame was portraying the character Bubba in TV's "In the Heat of the Night." In his quasi-racist ad Autry implies that Asian farmers will be delighted at the harsh treatment of big agribusiness here in the Valley.

I've started reading Marc Reisner's terrific book Cadillac Desert about the disappearing water in the West. The major reasons we have water woes are the greedy agribusiness interests that have drained the underground water, global climate change, the drought that is characteristic of a desert climate, and the short-sighted solution to dam every river within a thousand miles and divert the water here.

I don't condone violence, but I can understand the desperation that drives workers to violence. I've been treated like trash so much over the past several years I can't begin to describe it. I'm talking about companies like Zenith Insurance and Inland Starr Trucking and my current employers, who I won't name for now. This commentary by Mark Ames is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

There was another workplace rampage killing last week, just outside of Fresno, California, leaving two company employees dead and the other employees grateful to be alive.

Fresno, like so much of unofficial America, is still in a state of shock these days, after suffering from a non-stop barrage of tragic events and trends, of subprime devastation and a three-year drought, and political corruption and machinations that seem to be accelerating with every month. So unlike workplace shootings in the past, this one was quickly pushed off the front pages and almost forgotten, just a couple of days after it happened.

But like so many workplace shootings, scratch the surface of Fresno today, to get a sense of context, and you'll be shocked by how corrupt, desperate and bizarre the situation has become: pull the camera back from the scene of the crime, and suddenly you get Sean Hannity making regular appearances on behalf of agribusiness oligarchs, and beleaguered Mexican farmworkers gang-pressed into marching 50 miles in the Central Valley heat calling for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act … but more on that a bit later.

Here's what happened last Tuesday: Jim Badasci, who'd worked at Fresno Equipment for 10 years, showed up Tuesday morning with a shotgun at 8:57 a.m., and the first thing he did was kill a fellow co-worker, Ralph Wallis. About two dozen fellow co-workers scattered at that point, some taking refuge at a nearby car wash, others reportedly hiding inside of a locked vault, as Badasci, wearing a hunting vest filled with ammo, proceeded to "shoot the equipment" -- in this case, John Deere agricultural machinery.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

THE BLOOD ON BUSH AND CHENEY'S HANDS

Today is the anniversary of one of the most tragic days in American history. It was eight years ago that terrorists hijacked four jet airliners. Two of them crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and the fourth went down in Pennsylvania before it could reach its intended target. There is colossal evidence of the negligence of the Bush and Cheney administration in the failure to prevent the attacks. Not only is the blood of the 9/11 victims on their hands, but the innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan after Bush launched his war of revenge. This article by Marc Rubin is at http://www.examiner.com:

The evidence against Bush, Cheney and Rice for gross negligence bordering on the criminal in the 911 attacks is irrefutable as will be demonstrated. But a cowed press, afraid of being accused of being "unpatriotic" during a time of war, were complicit in fostering the fantasy put out by Bush and Rice that 911 couldnt have been prevented,

Bush was petrified of any real investigation into 911 and what it might reveal and the conclusions it would reach as evidenced by his refusal at first to cooperate with the 911 Commission and even vehemently opposed its creation. After it was created over his objections he at first,refused to allow Rice to cooperate. He didn't want to cooperate because he knew that in the end, he could be held accountable for the same kind of gross negligence that eventually became apparent in his decisions to invade Iraq, the post invasion mismanagement of Iraq, his handling of Katrina and what we know now about the failures of the lack of oversight involving massive fraud which has caused the economic meltdown.

One only has to remember that look on his face when Andy Card whispered that two planes had hit the World Trade Center in a terrorist attack, to see that at that moment Bush knew that all the people who had warned him that such an attack was not only possible but imminent, all the people who warned him that Al-Qaeda was the biggest threat to US national security in the world, were all right, and that he,Cheney and Rice who all dismissed terrorism as a major threat were wrong.

DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE REVIEWERS

There may be industries more anal retentive than the insurance business, but I'm not sure what they are. Let me tell you briefly about a job called "reviewing."

The job is to put together a property inspection report for an insurance company. You have photos, you have comments, you have a diagram. The report is initially submitted by a field inspector, who operates as an independent contractor. The field inspector generally doesn't give a darn about the quality of the report. Snap a couple of photos, slap on something they can call a diagram, and they earn their $15 or whatever.

Then it's up to you as the reviewer to try to assemble the mess into something coherent. Not only do you deal with jackasses at the insurance companies, you deal with jackasses in the company where you work.

The Waylon Jennings song said, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys." I think we should add reviewers to the list.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

CONSERVATIVES ARE TERMINALLY STUPID

Sometimes when I read a letter in The Fresno Bee I have to wonder if it's tongue in cheek. But right-wingers are so stupid you usually just believe the letter is real.

Today's example was a guy on a rant about Nazis and socialism. His argument is that Nazis were called "National Socialists." Therefore, they have to be socialists. If you consult political scientists, the people who know about these things, you will find that Nazis were fascists. Fascists are on the far political right, as far removed from socialists as you can get.

Communist East Germany called itself the German Democratic Republic Because they used the word "Democratic" does that mean they were a democracy? Of course not.

We should remember that Germany attacked the Soviet Union, who this guy would probably call socialist. Conservatives have an incredible talent for jamming personal attacks, stupidity, ignorance, and outright lies into very limited space.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

THE WEIRD RIGHT WING WORLD

I'm watching the coverage of Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral and there is great sadness. The sadness is over the loss of Senator Kennedy, over the loss of JFK and RFK all those years ago, the loss of other great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. We don't have leaders of that caliber or that vision left. Edward Kennedy was the torch that still burned and now his life has been extinguished.

The Fresno Bee prints snippets of letters to give you an idea of the content. Lately, when I see the usual frothing of right-wing freaks I don't bother to read the rest. Today's sampling included the assertion that liberals think we have all the answers. No, we don't. If we did, the world would be far better than it is. The hateful right-wing philosophy of greed, exploitation, bigotry, war, and hate would be shoved to the back of the closet. But right-wing influence is everywhere in the media.

For right-wingers there is never enough prejudice, never enough inequality, never enough death and destruction. It's like a narcotic for them.

I hope that we not only have leaders like JFK, RFK, and Edward Kennedy, but that we collectively become like them. That is when things will truly change.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

THE RIGHT-WING ASSAULT ON ALL OF US

Maybe we need a new social science that combines aspects of political science, sociology, and psychology to analyze the behavior of the right wing in this country. It's a movement mostly moved by hate and paranoia. It's all emotion and no reason. Most of the knuckle draggers who fulminate against things like "socialized medicine" have no idea of what they're talking about. They've heard the talking points from the thugs who manipulate them, people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Gingrich, and Palin. They repeat those talking points endlessly. They talk about "freedom" while they busily go about denying freedom to their fellow citizens by threat and intimidation.

If we don't get national health care, it will be a national tragedy. We should have had national health care decades ago. But just as the vestiges of slavery endured for one hundred years after the Civil War--and still endures in many ways--we continue with the same broken and heartless system. Other countries have successfully implemented health care for their citizens but we, the "can do" country, can't do it because of the cruel and selfish ideologues on the political right. This editorial from The New York Times summarizes it well from www.nytimes.com:

If nothing is done to slow current trends, the number of people in this country without insurance or with inadequate coverage will continue to spiral upward. That would be a personal tragedy for many and a moral disgrace for the nation. It is also by no means cost-free. Any nation as rich as ours ought to guarantee health coverage for all of its residents.

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

RIGHT WING WRECKAGE

It's ironic when you think about it. The traditional idea of conservatism is to conserve, to be cautious. What gets called "conservative" now is about destruction: destruction of the economy, destruction of the environment, destruction of civil liberties. It comes straight out of Orwell's 1984. The people who shout "freedom" are the destroyers of freedom.

Shakespeare described conservatives well when he wrote in A Midsummer's Night Dream: "The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion."

My prevailing mood these days is weariness. I have a job I absolutely loathe and can't leave because of the economic disaster left by the Bush administration. Hopes for universal health care, which this country desperately needs, appear to be dimming. The war in Afghanistan is actually escalating. News on the environmental front is constantly depressing. It seems the human race is determined to destroy our own planet. The "jaws of darkness" do indeed "devour it up."