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Borrowed from Down with Tyranny.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” - Sinclair Lewis

I’m in the process of reading Al Gore’s, The Assult On Reason. Coincidentally he has the same thought too. Wonder why that is?

Logan Murphy over at Crooks and Liars highlights Jon Stewart on the Daily Show doing a masterful job of showing some of the ways we were manipulated to support the war in Iraq. The masterful part comes at the end where the Daily Show shows us again what we are being fed to prepare us for Iran. BOHICA . Yes sir BOHICA. Bend over here it comes again.

Goebbels and Goering told us how the process works. Tell a lie big enough and repeat it often enough and pretty soon people will start to believe it. Then Herr Field Marshall Goering tells us how to put this propaganda to good effect:

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
Joseph Goebbels quotes

The end result is that nearly 70 percent of the American public believed Iraq played a role in the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. And even today more than 30 percent of Americans still hold this belief even though investigations show it is wrong. And now, once again, our mass media is working to whip us up into a frenzy to prepare us to attack Iran. It seems our mass media is easily manipulated to support the agenda of our government and no longer serves the purpose of providing the electorate the factual information with which to make informed decisions.

More and more I feel we are being manipulated and not too many people care enough to put an end to it. How else is it that this administration survives?

I know you ain’t gonna believe this, the rich are getting richer.

Over at Talking Points MemoLarry Johnson has a conspiracy theory in the works on the claimed mistaken movement of Air Launched Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base with nuclear warheads installed.

This Google map shows the Bomb Dump and the Weapons Storage Area at Hahn Air Base. Hahn is no longer an Air Base so naturally we no longer have any bombs or weapons there but this may help some of those on the TPM site understand a little more about the different types of storage areas.

The area surrounded by the blue line was the Conventional Munitions Storage Area, the area surrounded by yellow was the Weapons Storage Area(WSA). The two areas were separated by a fence. Dummy nuclear weapons were kept in the WSA. These were used for training and certification of the technicians before they were ever allowed to touch a real nuclear weapon. Getting in and out of the WSA has always been a time consuming drag. For that reason, whatever you needed to do your job there you usually kept there and that included training weapons and shapes.

A good number of Democrats and liberals in general have taken to criticizing party leaders in both houses for not being able to get the kinds of legislation passed that we think are necessary and just. With a 60 vote threshold that must be met in the Senate if the Republican choose to filibuster a measure, and most meaningful issues the Rs have filibustered, it is a tough challenge for our thin majority to overcome. Then once we do overcome this 60 vote hurdle in the Senate the President can (and most likely will) veto any measure contrary to his interests. Then to overcome the veto the Democrats need to muster 67 votes. And once again the votes to do that just are not there in this Congress on the majority of the issues that divide us. So I feel any criticism of our leaders to get the kinds of legislation we want passed is not a realistic expectation of something that can be achieved in the real world.

But what is much harder for our Congressional heroes to explain is how is it that legislation like the new FISA law got passed? How is it that legislation contrary to the will of the majority gets passed yet the majority can not impose its will on the minority. Something is wrong here. My patience with the Democrats is wearing thin. They need to get a set of balls and clamp down to get what they want. It is time to stop caving in to the Republicans. We don’t need to play nice they sure as hell don’t play nice with you. They take your ball and then don’t even let you play. You better figure something out. What good is it voting in a majority when it seems the minority is actually winning more of the battles. Better figure it out.

The hearing fell on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

You don’t think Presdent Bush would use the attack of 9/11/2001 to help influence the decision to stay in Iraq through 2008 do you? Of course this is just a coincidence. Right!

Yes sir buddy. B O H I C A, Bend Over Here It Comes Again. That’s right all you lemmings, bend over here it comes again. They are going to give us another rectal insertion of propaganda and the analysts will analyze and and the pundits will spew their spin and when all is said and done Bush will have Congressional support for another 3 or 4 months of Iraq non-sense. We did not learn when Powell lied to us. And the media which is supposed to do the serious digging to help us get the truth has been co-opted to spread the bamboozlement. All you have to do is watch Katie Couric tell us what General Petraeus is telling her. The answer is pre-ordained and shame on us all for falling for this crap once again. Whatever happened to, “Once they stand up we’ll stand down?” Well they never stood up and who was responsible for training the Iraqis so they could stand up? General Petraeus.
Oh yeah and wasn’t this surge all about giving the Iraqis the time and space to get their government functioning? What a success that has been. And what will be accomplished if we give them another 3-4 months to do what they’ve done for the last 3-4 months with time we bought with our soldier’s blood and our treasure?
Well you can read the same crap I’ve just written in countless places on the web and the only thing all of these words will have help accomplish is to provide a cathartic release for people like me.
And now I too am slowly coming to the conclusion, a lot of good elections do. Now it is just a matter of time till enough Americans come to realize you can’t be a moderate because there is no accommodation with the right, there is no compromise. The only thing that happens is you get compromised. We’ve already said we want this war to stop and there is no indication that is the direction we are headed. Six years is plenty of time for Iraq to get its act together. All of the scare tactics about dire consequences if we pull out sounds like so much Vietnam and all the lies we get routinely all over again. Enough. Enough.

Recently we made a day trip to St Louis to visit old neighborhoods and sample some of the finer cuisine like White Castle hamburgers. Among the things we went to see was the St Louis Art Museum. One of the things I was surprised to learn during this visit was the degree or depth or the emotional level to which people were dedicated to politics. During this particular visit I saw time and again dispalys of political vervor in all sorts of pieces of art to include furniture with political motives inlaid into the wood of chests and other pieces of furniture. This left little doubt as to the political orientation of the owner.

One of the pieces of art that caught my eye was this work, The County Election by George Caleb Bingham. When I saw it I imagined it showed shenanigans no less than what we’ve seen in Florida and elsewhere in recent elections. Then in looking for a better copy of this picture than the one I took I came across this site and this explanation of what is depicted. This site also has quite a bit more information on voting practices through the ages.

The conduct of elections has changed in many ways over the past 200 years. The extent of these changes is nicely illustrated by a comparison of today’s voting practices with those illustrated in George Caleb Bingham’s painting, The County Election (Figure 1). In addition to being a noteworthy artist, Bingham was a successful politician; this painting shows a polling place on the steps of the courthouse in Saline County, Missouri, in 1846.

In this painting, we see the judge (top center) administering an oath to a voter. The voter (in red) is swearing, with his hand on the bible, that he is entitled to vote and has not already done so. There was no system of voter registration, so this oath and the possibility that the judge or someone else in the vicinity of the polls might recognize him if he came back was all that prevented a voter from voting again and again.

There was no right to a secret ballot; having been sworn in, the voter simply called out his choices to the election clerks who sit on the porch behind the judge tallying the vote. Each clerk has a pollbook in which he writes the voter’s name and records his votes; multiple pollbooks were a common defense against clerical error. There are several people in the painting holding paper tickets in their hands. We know that these were not paper ballots because Missouri continued to use voice voting until 1863. In a general election, however, many voters might have wanted to bring their own notes to the polling place.

Campaigning at the polling place was legal and common. The man in blue tipping his hat to the voter immediately behind the man taking the oath is one of the candidates in this election, E. D. Sappington, who lost to Bingham by one vote. He’s handing out his calling cards so that people can easily read off his name to vote for him.

Voice votes offer modest protection against fraudulent vote counts: An observer can easily maintain an independent tally of the votes, and since there is no ballot box, it cannot be stuffed. On the other hand, the lack of privacy means that voters are open to bribery and intimidation; an employer can easily demand, for example, that his employees vote as required, and a crook can easily offer to pay a voter if he votes a certain way.

Kurt Hyde has sent me a scan of a page of a pollbooks in his collection from Bond County, Illinois; this contains the clerical records of a viva-voce election of the type shown in Bingham’s painting. Candidate names are written across the top of the page, while voter names are written down the left hand side as the voters arrive to vote. Instead of tick marks to record votes, the clerk has written in the running vote total as each vote is cast. Kurt Hyde reports that most of the pollbooks in his collection reflect this practice.

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

From the point where General Eric Shinseki’s advice was ignored what part of this catastrophe has the Bush Administration gotten right. I know, I’ll go ask Bill Kristol. He’s never been wrong! I’m not going to go through the litany of mistakes Bush and his minions have made. They are legendary already and do not need retelling.

It seems we are pinning a lot of our hopes on General Petraeus. This is the same General who was put in charge of training the Iraqis so as they stood up we stood down. At the time General Petraeus was a 2 star general. Now in addition to not training the Iraqis to stand up he also failed to control the weapons we issued to them and as the article states, it could well be that our own weapons are being used against us. Every general I’ve heard speaking on tv has had nothing but praise for General Petraeus saying he is among the best of the best. And yet when you look at what he has actually accomplished I have to wonder on what all the praise for the good general is based. My feeling is we’ve done everything in the world to bolster this guy’s credibility. We’ve drawn particular attention to his scholarly works related to dealing with counter insurgency. But in the few instances where we’ve actually had evidence of the general actually doing something, being responsible for something I can see no evidence of any great accomplishments that match his credentials or billing. I hope I am wrong and this guy really can do the great things we’ve been lead to believe he could. I sure would like to have another General in our military who could match the stature of Eric Shinseki for speaking truth to power.

After all the posturing, after all the American politicians parade through the market places, after all is said and done what is one sure way to tell what conditions are really like in Iraq? Well the answer comes from some unusual quarters but it is an unmistakable report of what the situation in Iraq is really all about and all of the spinners can’t put any “English” on this ball.

BAGHDAD - There were no cheering crowds or ticker tape parade Friday along the dangerous airport road to greet Iraq’s Asian Cup soccer champs. And the team’s captain, a Sunni who scored the winning goal, didn’t even return because he feared for his life.

Here is a country in desperate need of good news and finally gets it but can not capitalize on it or enjoy it because of the security situation on the ground. No spin. No lengthy explanations. Sad story, but that is the way it is and anyone who wants to tell you this turd tastes like a peach is lying.

When you botch something pretty badly I’ve generally found the best course of action is to admit the error, look for ways to prevent it from happening again, and press on with what you were doing. I’ve grown up with the lesson drilled into me that it was a sign of maturity to be able to admit your mistakes. And yet the conduct of President Bush and this administration repeatedly and continually has me wondering why they are not being held to account by members of the Republican party. And even more so, it seems that come election time the American public seems to have the retention span of a small bar of soap when it comes to the misdeeds of this administration. Do you think the American public will remember when elections roll around that President Bush put off all questions concerning the Plame affair until litigation was complete. And now that that is the case the President refuses to answer any questions about this topic because it is old news, a dead issue. Drives you right up the wall. Is this adminstration answerable to the American people? Apparently not. While that is gauling it pales in comparison by this administration’s failure to answer questions concerning the death of Pat Tilman and the reporting of that incident following the death. I don’t think even Nixon was this brazen. Are the Republicans at long last going to get some balls and stand up for what is right or is this going to be more party line politics and no one will be held to account for the sham that this incident is? And lastly, will the voting public remember when it comes time for elections who stood up for what is right and who stood up for party loyalty regardless of what was at stake? My bet is the Republicans are going to bank on the amnesia most Americans develop about 90 seconds after they hear a report on the television.

Post Turtle

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old Texas rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to former Texas Governor, George W. Bush, and his elevation to the White House.

The old Texan said, “Well, ya know, Bush is a post turtle.”

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, “When you’re driving down a country road, and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that is a post turtle.” The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain. “You know he didn’ t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, and you just want to help the dumb shit get down.”

Hat tip to my buddy Roger!

I would think if you are a Republican right about now you would be looking for a different party to represent their ideals. If the party did not exist you’d have to create it. The one they have now is looking for the short road to implosion.

Incompetence, cronyism, dishonesty, politicization of governmental functions that should not be politicized, corruption and did I mention incompetence are hallmarks of this administration and in turn the Republican Party. The news this week gives a graphic picture of this state of affairs that has played out not just this week but week after week.

By now the Iraq war is a billboard attesting to this administration’s incompetence. Contributing to that incompetence is the heart of the problem, the politicization of things that simply should not be politicized. In the case of Iraq it was both our intelligence functions and our military that were politicized.

The sexed up intelligence of the aluminum tubes, the yellowcake from NIger, the squadrons of unmanned aerial vehicles, the tons of WMD about which there could be no question of their existence just did not exist highlighting not only rank incompetence but on further study of each of those conclusions the degree to which each of the functions involved were politicized to come up with the wrong answers. Then you have another billboard of incompetence and polarization in the case of the drumming out of General Eric Shinseki. That case does not need to be repeated nor do the results. We see the mayhem and slaughter and the body count on our televisions screens nightly. Then came the blockbuster, Katrina, that made it impossible to call the incompetence by any other name. Today in his commentary Ted Koppel further relates both the incompetence and polarization in this piece you can listen to.

After all of this, after all the lying, the deception, the incompetence you would think the members of the Republican party would cut their loses and look for a course of action that would exude not only competence and forthrightness particularly when it is our soldiers and marines who are paying the price with their lives and bodies but their votes and actions continue to give us more of the same. The President gives his vision of the situation based on who knows what source. Maybe he has had another talk with God.

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a “Churchillian” vision of “victory” in Iraq and defend the country’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. “A constitutional order is emerging,” he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said “the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible,” adding that he could not “point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,” according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

“The government is unable to govern,” Hayden concluded. “We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function.”

So despite the report of those who should know and General Hayden seems to be pretty plain spoken Bush knows better. And then we come to the perennial boogeyman, al Qaeda.

Hayden catalogued what he saw as the main sources of violence in this order: the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality, general anarchy and, lastly, al-Qaeda. Though Hayden had listed al-Qaeda as the fifth most pressing threat in Iraq, Bush regularly lists al-Qaeda first.

So I am sure for the rest of his tenure Bush is going to invoke al Qaeda as a scare tactic. And his henchmen will repeat what they are told to repeat ala’ Mr. Chertoff (refer to the Koppel piece if you don’t think that happens) So Wolf, Wolf to you all and I question do these scare tactics still work to do anything? They may just be counterproductive in lulling us to ignoring another false warning that really is not a false warning. Shame on this administration and what they have done to build such mistrust.

Lets not forget those other monuments to incompetence that are hallmarks of this administration: the Attorney General Firings, the Passport fiasco, and the Port Security fiasco of just a short time ago. Damn, when was the last time one administration screwed up so much in so little time? Oh and lets not forget the Plame Outing. Anyway you look at that you have to admit if nothing else it highlights a penchant for incompetence.

But today’s Republican party is not only the party of incomptence it is the party of hypocricy and a couple of stories in todays news highlight the case. The thing is simlar stories of the family values party can be found almost daily. But here they are just because they are so good:

Only today, Florida state Representative Bob Allen (R), who is co-chairman of McCain’s Florida campaign, was arrested in a Titusville park restroom on charges of solicitation after he approached a plain clothes police officer and offered to perform oral sex on the officer for $20.

And of course that family values guy http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2007/07/tpmtv_vitter_vavavoom.php

All of that just wants to make you go out and join the Republican Party, right?

Well I think I’ve applied all the categories that fit this post.

Compassionate conservatism! If you’ve been wondering exactly what this phrase means we now know. Paul Begala makes the case in spades on the Huffington Post:

Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker — and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial — and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband — after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, “Betty Lou ain’t a threat to no one she ain’t married to.” No dice.

Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial.

But if you’re rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. As George W. Bush demonstrated in giving Scooter Libby a Get Out of Jail Free Card, he is only compassionate to conservatives.

And as you read through the various commentaries you have to wonder why did Bush grant this clemency at this time before Scooter served a single day in prison. Bush does not dispute the fact Scooter was fairly convicted. What Bush does say is that 30 months is too harsh a sentence. Such compassion! But it does not seem as though the sentence handed down to Scooter was out of line with the general federal guidelines for this sort of crime.

All of this lends some credence that maybe it was better for Bush and his fellow travelers not to have Scooter go to prison and start talking about things that really need not come out in the open. Just might bring the whole house of cards down. Know what I mean?

Just think, Judith Miller and Paris Hilton both served more time than Scooter. Isn’t he just too special?