the US Senate??

there certainly is no "us" in the US Senate, especially today. Two major votes are headed to the floor, both of which represent the absolute worst of greed and malfeasance among the entitled and enobled classes of the neo-feudal lords of capital. I realized this AM that the average age of senators, the mean, is now quite similar to my own. And yet it is extraordinarily clear that these "peers" have nothing whatsoever in common with me, or the vast huge mass of baby boomers in this country. They, the Senators, are part of the very elite, the less than one-half of one percent of the population who receives the benefits and entitlements of great wealth. It does not matter to them that passing a credit industry written piece of legislation will intentionally impoverish millions upon millions of citizens for an entire generation. That is afterall their goal. Only when the mass of poor can no longer afford to consume will the lords be able to re-create this nation as the future leader of the third world of producers and manufacturers. Imagine, in the next ten years, a nation of a couple of hundred million laborers, service workers receiving wages under a plan that no longer has a minimum wage setting, or that allows the people to keep their money, instead guiding it towards the coffers of the wealthy's financial institutions.

If you think this isn't going to happen, then examine the appointment of Myers to the 9th circuit. A man that all the Bar review folks find incompetent, a man that single handedly, as the Interior department's solicitor, chose to rewrite policy to encourage the exploitation of any and all environments by the rich, no matter how costly the impact on the people those choices may be. He cares not one bit for clean water or clean air. He cares not one bit for there being anything called public land. He wants it all to become private and to be exploited by the private interests to their hearts and pocketbooks desires. This is perhaps the most insane choice possible for a judge. Yet the senate feels it is okay. Why? Because they have a plan. Their plan is his plan. They don't want public land either. They don't want union labor, they don't want social services and social welfare programs. They need to impoverish and environmentally destroy the population so that this nation can become the future mass producer of products for consumer driven economies of Asia and Europe. Wait and see.

Mihi ignosce.

Many people have suggested that this was due to the belief that the United States was either on the brink of becoming or actually has turned into a fascist state. For persons laboring under such overheated imaginings, it is only necessary to refer them to any of the many available texts describing what real fascism brought to their respective populations. There do not exist routine, widespread assassinations in this country; there are not camps where political and social deviants are routinely rounded up, detained, and ultimately killed; there is not the universal suppression of opposition voices and views in print, on the internet, and via other means. It is time for persons who seriously subscribe to the belief that we live in a fascist country to do some intensive reading…or get medical help. Such obviously overstated and even delusional views have led to correspondingly deluded political conclusions…in the case of the recent campaign, to the support of the “antifascist” corporate hucksters of the Democratic Party.

Poor Dan Rafael. He has to resort to typical neo-con rovian reich wing logic to deconstruct a position that was personally detrimental to him. If we stick to his own phrase "brink of becoming.. a fascist state" then we see that his argument is already moot. His subsequent claims to "overheated imaginings" and necessity to refer to "available texts" illuminates the complete failure of his rhetorical devise. Are we to suppose that there were no beginning steps towards fascism in those states? If Dan had actually done the reading he demeaningly proports others to do, he would be forced to acknowledge that all of the pre-conditions have been met. This is another of those lamest ignorant rants by poor losers. OOoh the Green Party deserves your votes. WEll not this way.

na ce' ce'

once in a while you have to simply take the time to smell the typos. and if that semiotically failed aphorism suffuses the tone, then take this lovely headline from a major film media rag:

The Contenders - We look at which films will dike it out for Oscar gold!

"dike it out"?? really, is this a simple middle finger versus index finger faux pas? Why would anyone these days use the word dike for any purpose other than to talk about flooding in the netherlands or denmark? Hell out on the left coast folks go out of their way to call dikes levees just to avoid any social dysphemization. But these films are going to dike it out. Really pretty strange, this lesbianization of oscar gold. Still one has to wonder even about the typo. Duking it out, such an old ancient cliche for fisticuffs hauled out to suggest battle, mistyped to suggest lesbians. Unless one can possibly imagine how a large earthen barrier would be erected by one film against another?

And please pray tell me, where was the freakin editor on this one? We are talking a herald tribune paper and national herald by-line. Were the various editors in on this one, a tongue in cheeky chortle at the expense of the fundamentalist bashers of hollywood? Consider all the possibilities!

Mázashkanshkan tónakca hwo?

why it's howdy doody time.

well no, not really, but sometimes, even without Reagan it seems to be. Bush is not that different. Tapes are released suggesting that he used cocaine, lsd, psilocybin, marijuana during his twenty-somethings. And what does the media do with the story?? Spin it to say, oh how cute he was. What is it with these people that they just can't bring themselves to honestly criticize this man and his handlers? He is surrounded by gay men in positions of power, and they rail against homosexuality. He is surrounded by war mongering fascists and they claim that they are fighting for democracy and freedom. He is surrounded by the greediest most corrupt government officials and they suggest that ethics are a liberal plot to overthrow the country.

We as a nation are struggling with reality. We are being forced to simultaneously hold the most contradictory of positions--that corporate corruption is good as long as it helps the wealthiest people retain and increase their wealth and that making war on the world is efficient in projecting the ideals of this same corruption to all other nations. Yet we are also asked to retain good christian values. What was that story in montana? A hate crime bill can't be passed because it might restrict evangelical fundamentalist clergy's hate speech. Talk about fascist thinking..

mato maza ska

Finally, while life and social change can’t be all fun and games, there is the valid counterculturally-inflected notion that many kinds of work can be imbued with a sense of play and a sense of engagement if we actively try to bring some creativity and some autonomy into the process. It may never be possible to make plumbing or writing tax code fun. But I think for most of us our idea of fun has changed from getting ripped on acid to being engaged creatively as thinking participants in useful and interesting work (including for social change). So there is still some fun to be had.

Well maybe. Part of what is making it not fun is that there is no acid out there to get ripped on, which would certainly make all of everything a whole lot more fun. It is this very signifcant, oft ignored, fact that is the substantive difference maker. The more LSD available the less the fundamentalist christian eschatology will seem real to its constituents. The simplest equation. If we truly want dynamic social change we need more LSD.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=75

effrontry to commongood..

a quick note first. After James Watt and during the first papa doc bush administration, the US government decided not to use cost factor determinants, cost-benefit analyses, for environmental problems. Thus as baby doc bush's Rovian minions pursue environmental destruction, while arguing the the economy must be considered, they of course never have to account for the economic costs of the destroyed environment. Hence the "tort-reform" measures that reduce or eliminate the possibility of the actual costs of those environmental factors.

today's other thought problems
the Pentagon allocated $127 billion to build a robot army. Some of the robots will look and walk like humans, some will hover in the air, and some will make their own choices during battle. "The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said a representative from the U.S. Joint Forces Research Center. It was revealed that the Army, seeking to avoid scandal, destroyed photos of U.S. soldiers holding mock executions of hooded Afghani detainees.

so the "lawyers" say that robots will kill indiscriminantly, but in case there are legal issues they will destroy all the evidence.

Utinam mythos falsa tuam religiosa totam suffodiant!

The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting.
Speakers at the national meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science expressed concern Sunday that some scientists in key federal agencies are being ignored or even pressured to change study conclusions that don't support policy positions. The speakers also said that Bush's proposed 2005 federal budget is slashing spending for basic research and reducing investments in education designed to produce the nation's future scientists. And there also was concern that increased restrictions and requirements for obtaining visas is diminishing the flow to the U.S. of foreign-born science students who have long been a major part of the American research community.

The Age of Aquarius is filled with mythic and faith based orientations to realities that are now trying to kill the wonder of scientific thought. Destroy logic and reason at all costs seems to be the motto of the crazed conservative constituency. Ridding the nation of scientific thinking empowers the "believers" to speak out, since their claims to substantive phenomenological constructs rely on information that is at best specious and most likely ficticious. Dumbing down the science increases the rising up of dogma. Orthodoxy trumps skepticism, fundamentalism replaces mathematics, evangelicalism overwhelms reason---a new stew of zealots burning witches and destroying the remnants of manichean wonder. The war is engaged. The battle lines are forming.

éyapaha cha

Remember that question everyone was asking after the 9/11 attacks: ''Why do they hate us?'' That was such an important question, but it was buried as quickly as it emerged. Churchill's essay was one of the few public attempts to answer it. He tried to start a national discussion about anti-Americanism; and while his tone might be abrasive, the answers he offered were (as always with his work) well-supported and reasonable: Americans are hated not because of some vague notion of their ''freedom,'' but for the specific reason that the United States is engaged in truly despicable practices abroad. Alongside those already mentioned, we can now add the return of such medieval practices as detainment without charge, ''trial'' without attorneys, and worst of all, torture.

Ultimately, Churchill's point was to wake Americans up to the impending Israelification of this country: the making of an absolute security state defined by perpetual cycles of militarism, attack and response. Do you want to live in a country like that? It doesn't have to be that way, but the United States is hurting the planet and its peoples.

what is left out here is the religious component, otherwise it is profoundly correct. Elements in the US feel passionately that they can create a nation-state in the same form as Israel, for evangelical, fundamentalist christians. Armed with the most sophisticated weaponry, controlled to the nth degree with technology and ultra-nasty privately contracted mercenary forces, the new zealots will model their future Reich after the Zionist manifesto.

If we live in a democracy, Churchill implies, then we need to take responsibility for the actions of our government. Otherwise, some people on the receiving end of U.S. brutality will see no viable option but to push back, as did past figures like Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Tecumseh. Remember them?

cultural tourette's

that is the best way to describe the media in this country, suffering from a dysfunctional constant repetition of the same stories over and over. the lies they spew, sometimes foreced, sometimes of their own volition, compound upon themselves over and over. the tics of the punditocracy, the spasms of the nightly news anchors--these are the symptions of mental illness. our society is ill, it needs healing. we are suffering from leadership that is truly insane. They are egomaniacal socio- paths who have not one nano-bit of compassion and moral consciousness. The future of this nation is at a threshhold point, literally balanced on a precipace of no return, from a fascist ideological xenophobic militarized police state. As soon as the economy starts tipping over its own bottomless cliff, the war for the spirit and soul of the US will begin. WE must not flinch from the battle.

Amayupta yo ye.

Is this not what i suggested already today??? golly gee..

During the past four years, that portion of the American public not suffering from self-induced voluntary lobotomies (variously estimated at between one-third and one-half of the adult population) has witnessed one of the most macabre displays of Machiavellian mendacity ever foisted off on a nominally civilized nation. Act One of this Opus Diabolus began with Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, et al, snuffling around in the dark, dank corners of 20th Century history, painstakingly gathering up all the rancid kernels of European fascism they could lay their grubby little fingers on and repackaging them into star-spangled, red, white and blue Mylar seed packets. These they put into the hands of a simple (but not-so-plain-spoken) farmer named George, who, along with his adoring hordes of synaptically challenged followers, sowed them deep in the furrows of the American landscape.

to ka ho? wa yan ka! he `cu sni yo!

Using blogger the last few days has not been easy nor accessible. This is unfortunate given the pressing nature of the civil and social climate permeating the US at this time. Not being able to post daily is frustrating in the least.

Look, it is really getting to be simple to see how the polarization of our nation is being used by the Rove reich to create legislation that will destroy all that is good and valuable with US constitutional governance. Piece by piece, bill by bill we are seeing the structural foundation of an intolerant fascist state forming. This state will be ruled by martial law, a police state framed by technologies and private contracted security forces that are free to ignore any and all protections for citizens formerly found in the US constitution. The attacks on free speech and intellectual freedom are escalating. The reduction of all media to the orwellian mindspeak of Rove's minions, coupled with the increase in character assassinations and removal of dissenting voices, are part and parcel of this regime's coup d'etat.

We don't have to read too deeply into the pieces of legislation proposed across the nation, as well as in D.C. to understand that the intentionally impoverishment of the mass of the population is part of the overall plan to remake this nation in the image of the worst developing totalitarian states out there today. Indonesia, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc--these are the models of this administration. They are creating a christian only nation, disenfranchising and impoverishing all of those who are not one with them. Pockets of highly polluted and toxic environments will expand around the poor, as health care is removed thus increasing the death of dissenters and those who might voice opposition. Remember we are talking the US here, not some Sudan or Thailand, or Lebanon. Iraq is just a practice for the big one.

Coming soon, conscription near you! Imagine sending people who are bankrupt to the DU toxified war zones of the middle east. You are poor, you are struggling, you are drafted. No age requirements, no gender discrimination. Just being poor constitutes your selective criteria. This not a joke. This will happen. Those that refuse will be imprisoned and eventually lose their citizenship. Then they will be shipped over there anyway. Rove et al have studied the mistakes of the great totalitarian leaders in history. They have studied the successes of Israel's Ziionist manifestos and Indonesia's military regimes while learning from the erosion of power among folks like Pinochet and the Saudi royal family. WE are next. WE are being prepared to become the world's most efficient, technologically superior, dominant fascist state. There will be no turning back once the course is not only set but driven with the engines of faith, corporate greed, and military might. No one dare stand in our way, as we will have no compulsions whatsoever to resist using nuclear weapons and other horrible WMD's.

WE must be aware, attentive, freee to fight this at every turn. If not we are culpable in destroying the earth as we know it.

considérez les pensées suivantes

there are a group of US veterans who were captured by iraq during GW 1 and were abused and tortured by the Iraqis. They subsequently sued for recompense and were favored with a verdict offering them around a billion dollars. however the US government refuses to allow the veterans to receive this money, claiming it is all the more important to use it in iraq, even to pay iraqis who were abused and tortured by US military personnel and private contracted security folks. All of this ignores some rather startling considerations.

The US is responsible for "losing" almost $14 billion dollars in iraqi economic resources as well as from poorly audited and managed contracts. The missing $14 billion, and probably a great deal more than that must be somewhere. Finding one billion of it would pay off these Vets and go a long way towards reassuring those actually fighting in Iraq now, that they might be protected when they come home. Of course they can't find that money. Really they don't want to find it. But how did it go missing?

Well, we need to consider some history here. During the Vietnam war, the bodies of the dead US troops were flown to Andrews Air Force base in Maryland. Thousands of body bags and boxes were shipped back, or at least we thought so. Then it was discovered that the Vice President of the US, who had been the governor of Maryland, working with his friends in organized crime syndicates, was using the shipments of bodies to bring in cash, jewels, other economic resources and huge amounts of heroin (CIA fund generating resources it turned out). The secret arrivals of bodies and the covered boxes and delayed dispersals covered up this huge illegal black market machinery. The V-P was indicted, resigned, and went to prison for: you guessed it; income tax evasion. RICO laws hadn't been created yet underwhich he could have been indicted and imprisoned for much much longer.

So this war begins and dead US troops are flown secretly to Dover Air Force base in Delaware, a home to very very wealthy Bush/Rove contractors. More delays, no press allowed, secret goings on at the base with none of the interest or scrutiny that such behaviors generated during the Nixon years. What came back here in those boxes, along with bodies??? Money, lots and lots of money, gold, jewels, art, priceless museum antiquities, etc. Billions of Iraqi economic resources, carefully smuggled into the US and making their way to the largest personal benefactors of Bush/Cheney/Rove et al. We cant' even begin to imagine how much has been removed and shipped here. You have to love the good ol' USA

'can na popa wi

A NASA study found that 2004 was the fourth-warmest year on record. Scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told of being forced to cover up their findings regarding risks to endangered species. Forty-two percent said they feared retaliation if they told the truth.
Science bad, faith good, right? These whistle blowing types obviously are just not faithful enough to accept the pronouncements of the man who has the appointed role some god gave him to rule the world. How dare they questions his commitment to faith and to divine provenance. Greenhouse gas expansion, extinction of species, increased toxicity of the environment--these are all part of the "plan" of Rove's minions god. Fortunately the Episcopal church of England, and the National Evangelical Association have decided that Creation Care is vastly more important than the apparent choice of some to believe god told them it was all about money.

The election results in Iraq were announced. Several parties gained seats in the newly created Iraqi parliament, including the United Iraqi Alliance, the Kurdistan Alliance, the Iraqi List, "Iraqis," the Turkmen Iraqi Front, National Independent Elites and Cadres Party, the Communist Party, the Islamic Kurdish Society, the Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq, the National Democratic Alliance, National Rafidain List, and the Reconciliation and Liberation Entity.
So the US sponsors a democratic election that elects communists. As if that is going to happen. "Elites and Cadres" sounds pretty damn socialist to me. These are great names for various interests who have agendas that are profoundly anti-US. And yet, the Reich wing of Rove's minions presents all this as good. Strange possibilities once you consider the ramifications of it all.

A report showed that, between April and September 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration received fifty-two reports about Al Qaeda's plans to hijack airplanes.
Ponder this a moment. So many specific reports linked to US intelligence agencies. Is is logical and rational to believe that these reports were not understood for what they were intended to mean. The intelligence agencies were crying wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf. Why? Well if you or i were going to use planes to destroy symbolic buildings in order to create a fascist dictatorship police state of the US, we would want the FAA to feel that yet another stupid warning is being broadcast. Then they ignore all the signs until it actually happens. How do we know the Saudi's took over the three planes w/ box cutters? WE believe our government telling us that?? i don't think so.

Quin Shea speaking to coal industrialists...

Nowhere, nowhere in the deepest recesses of our gray matter did it ever occur to us that
we could so warp the new source review program to do what was done in roughly 1998.
This is going to change in the next few months. I guarantee it.
Mercury. All right. Also on a substantive matter, we've talked about Kyoto a lot. That's
been out there. It's the big boogie man in the last few years. Kyoto is dead. Kyoto is
absolutely dead. It's not going to happen. We're taking steps right now to reverse every
piece of paper that EPA has put together where they could call CO2 a pollutant under
the Clean Air Act. That's going to be nailed down in the next few months.
Internationally, the U.S. is not going to work on Kyoto. It is dead. For those of you, not
you specifically, but for those who want to continue to beat that dead horse, let me tell
you right now, there will be no equine resurrection here. Now, having said that,
mercury, in my opinion, is very Kyoto-like in its potential impacts. Mercury to me is
the issue that scares me the most of the ones that are out there right now.

a day of such beauty, marred by hell's minions

The report took five months to release because of "classification issues," the White House said, including deletion of references to any existing security measures. "Civil aviation seems to have been lulled into a false sense of security," the commission wrote, a lapse particularly surprising given the FAA's own intelligence assessment about growing terrorist threats.

things you have to appreciate today include a report that was specifically delayed until well after the election in order to cover up the facts of the complicity of the administration in the events of 9/11. The FAA knew something could happen, and were warned it would happen, but were cowed into rejecting any substantive security measures for "reasons" known only to Rove, Rice, Cheney and bushsheet.

Another touching moment today is the coincidence of the amerikan bar association report indicating at no less than 800 years of time is being spent in prisons in the US by persons wrongfully convicted of crimes through poor legal representation. This is a seriously low figure and represents may 50% of the actual mistakes. In a nation that criminalizes so much behavior and punishes more per capita than any other nation except china, one would think we have a powerful and wonderful criminal justice system. WEll, the US Senate voted today to move all class action suits to federal courts where they will be rejected by the 60% of the judiciary appointed by repugnicans beginning with nixon. So not only will the hideous criminals at Grace and Company never stand trial for second degree murder in their knowingly toxifying the US w/ asbestos, but the victims will no longer be able to sue them for their wrongful deaths. Yes justice in the USA is blind, to the rich and powerful, and intentionally abusive to the rest of us.

winkte chica w/ helmet head

From today’s Washington Post:

…if the roar from the audience was mostly polite and restrained, that was partly because only a handful of the school’s 5,500 students were allowed near the auditorium where Rice spoke, and the initial questions were vetted in advance by the school and the State Department.

PARIS: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday beseeched Europeans to set aside their caustic dispute with America over the war in Iraq and join President George W. Bush's campaign to bring democracy to the Muslim world. "It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past. It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship, and a new chapter in our alliance," Ms Rice told French academics and government officials in the capital of European opposition to the Iraq invasion and other Bush foreign policies.

I can't possibly believe that Euro leaders are paying even the slightest bit of attention to this queen of not so masterful deception. They pay more attention to our subtexts than US citizens pay to their own purchasing agendas and/or reality TV shows. They know this flaming bulldyke of a egocentric twit has no conscience or any moral underpinning for that matter. This speech was seen there as an afront to civil dignities, and laughed at in their media, enjoyed for all the hypocrisy and stupidity that it represents. It was clearly a speech for those here in the US, and not for those who had the horrible misfortune to actually have to sit and listen to it.

wakan tanka this isn't

faith based realities.. we don't need science either... just have some faith in them and all shall be revealed.. and all will be well... unless of course you aren't, then so what..
WASHINGTON — In the latest sign of a philosophical change in how the government should deliver social services, President Bush's new budget would cut some traditional aid for the poor in such areas as housing and health coverage.

At the same time, some religion-based programs that promote such goals as sexual abstinence and marriage and provide mentors for at-risk children would enjoy increased federal aid.

Both the shift away from long-standing social welfare policies and the willingness to step up spending on programs tied to religious organizations reflect the fact, analysts said, that the administration is more comfortable than many of its predecessors in advocating social service strategies with a moral dimension.

Administration officials said Monday that the increases — although generally smaller than the cutbacks — would be made in part through payments to faith-based organizations, a hallmark of Bush's self-described "compassion agenda."

a heyoke winkte grain of rice

consider three things reading the following. It was accompanied by a picture of rice holding a headphone up to her ear for translation purposes. A woman who has all too proudly suggested her linguistic skills are vastly superior needs translations in europe??? Next, remember what Boxer and other Senate Democrats described about everything she uttered and said. It is all a lie; she intentionally deceives; she is incapable of telling the truth. Finally, understand that Bush sends this bitch to scold europe and cajole its nations into buying into our economic and military defeats just to keep us afloat. Why? Put aside differences? Because she is telling them to. right!

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Europe to put aside differences over the Iraq war and open a new chapter in relations with the United States to help it spread democracy worldwide.<>Rice pointedly made the appeal in France, a fierce critic of the war, during an eight-nation tour to drive home the message that President George W. Bush wants Europe to be Washington's partner and not its rival. "America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda and Europe must stand ready to work with America," Rice said on Tuesday in comments from a keynote foreign policy speech released to reporters before delivery.<> "After all, history will surely judge us not by our old disagreements but by our new achievements," said Rice, a former university provost. Rice is to deliver her the speech at the prestigious Sciences Politiques university in Paris which has been at the centre of intellectual and political debate over transatlantic relations. The address will be the main speech of her tour in Paris, "to send the message to Europe that the Bush administration has ended its own internal debate about whether to view a united Europe as a rival or as a partner," a U.S. State Department official said. "It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past. It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship and a new chapter in our alliance," Rice said.

Inaugural address-west wing style.. consider

FADE IN: INT. TOBY'S OFFICE - DAY

Will is reading Toby passages from the speech that Stacy dropped off to him. Elsie

is also in the room.



WILL

"America needs a new doctrine for a new century..."



TOBY

Mr. Bailey...



WILL

"...based not just on our interest, but on our values, across the world."



TOBY

Define those values for me, please.



WILL

I don't have to. The President of the United States already has. "We are for freedom

of speech everywhere. Freedom to worship everywhere. Freedom to learn for every child."



TOBY

Just out of curiosity, how are you going to enforce a universal global right to

education?



ELSIE

The same way the U.S. enforced anything it wanted in the middle part of the 20th

century. Somebody called our father.



TOBY

What exactly are you doing here, anyway?



ELSIE

The First Lady likes my jokes.



TOBY

Excellent.



WILL

"It is our duty to give more than merely our support. We must give our strength

diplomatically, materially....



WILL and TOBY

"And if need be, militarily."



TOBY

I read it, I think, 16 years ago. It was about El Salvador and he had it stricken

from the record and there was a reason.



WILL

What?



TOBY

I don't know, but things have reasons.



WILL

Do they?



TOBY

Yes, they do.



WILL

Okay, but C.J. this morning put the body count at 15,000.



TOBY

You're talking about Khundu? That's what the hell this is about?



WILL

We're talking about everything. "And freedom from the tyranny of oppression, economic

slavery, religious fanaticism." Tell me if any of these describe anyone we know.



TOBY

This isn't what I meat by drafting new language.



WILL

What did you mean?



TOBY

Making the old language sound better. You're asking the two of us to create foreign

policy by ourselves. That's usually not a good idea. You've got your Pentagon, the

NSC and-- what do you call it?-- the State Department.



Bartlet picks up the speech off of Will's desk.



BARTLET

"A new doctrine for a new century, based not just on our interests, but on our

values across the world." Well, that's pretty spicey stuff.



WILL

You wrote it, sir.



WILL

"America stands today as the one truly indispensaple nation-- the strongest force and

the proudest voice for peace, pluralism and prosperity that the world has ever known."



TOBY

Okay, keep the ancient Romans out of the first ten rows, and we're fine.



WILL

"Today at the dawn of a new century, America needs a new commitment to protect our own

security, to model freedom to the world."



TOBY

To model it?



WILL

I figure if we're not going to help create freedom from tyranny, then let's at least

sell some BarcaLoungers.



TOBY

The U.S. doesn't help create freedom from tyranny?



WILL

I forget to add, "where our own interests aren't necesssarly involved." [reading speech]

"To do what we can to fulfill humanity's promise and to prove that self-determination is the watchword of all mankind."



BARTLET

We're for freedom of speech everywhere. We're for freedom to worship everywhere. We're

for freedom to learn... for everybody. And because, in our time, you can build a bomb

in your country and bring it to my country, what goes on in you country is very much my

business. And so we are for freedom from tyranny everywhere, whether in the guise of

political oppresion, Toby, or economic slavery, Josh, or religious fanaticism, C.J.

That most fundamental idea cannot be met with merely our support. It has to be met with

our strength. Diplomatically, economically, materially. And if pharoah still don't free

the slaves, then he gets the plagues, or my cavalry, whichever gets there first. The

USTR will go crazy and say that we're not considering global trade. Committee members

will go crazy and say I haven't consulted enough. And the Arab world will just go

indescriminately crazy. No country has ever had a doctrine of intervention when only

humanitarian interests were at stake. That streaks going to end Sunday at noon. So, if

you're on board with this, what I need you to do...



BARTLET

"Set free the oppressed, break every yoke, clothe the naked and your light shall break

forth like the dawn, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard."

ho ka hey

i have not seen too many things more disgusting than the pre-game run up on Fox. some of the most amazing uber fascist promos ever exposed for exactly what they are. we are indeed a nation that needs to feel deeply ashamed. this week the Reich House has released a budget for 2006 that destroys the fabric of our society in the praise and name of security and military might. this week the nation abused all aspects of its civil liberties by exposing its own fascist agenda in the attacks on university professors. and we then are exposed to rampant patriotic militarism and censorship and media hype all in the name of super consumerism... it is a tragedy of massive proportions

wic'a sha wa cic'u

Before you read the post below, consider the history of israel and zionism. Israel is a jewish country that provides social services and capital assets to its jewish citizens but restricts them or prohibits them from muslim and christian citizens. This is based on the Zionist Manifesto a document that seems to be the blueprint for the fundamentalist neo-cons who are envisioning a christian nation to counter the clearly jewish one and the perceived islamic one. Forgetting for a moment that the most massively successful commmunist country that leads the world's economy is not part of this trio, realize the obviousness of this vision. The scariest aspect is not that they want this to happen, nor that they have the capacity and political power to make it happen, but that from their perspective, it is the only logical sensible thing to do.

"Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ," writes reconstructionist George Grant. Christian dominion will be achieved by ending the separation of church and state, replacing U.S. democracy with a theocracy ruled by Old Testament law, and cutting all government social programs, instead turning that work over to Christian churches. Reconstructionists also would abolish government regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, because they are a distraction from their goal of Christianizing America, and subsequently, the rest of the world. "World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish," says Grant. "We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less." Only when that conquest is complete can the Lord return.

"I used to think there was no real need for Christians to monitor the changes related to greenhouse gases. If it was going to take a couple hundred years for things to get serious, I assumed the nearness of the End Times would overshadow this problem. With the speed of climate change now seen as moving much faster, global warming could very well be a major factor in the plagues of the tribulation."

To understand how the Christian right worldview is shaping and even fueling congressional anti-environmentalism, consider two influential born-again lawmakers: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

DeLay, who has considerable control over the agenda in the House, has called for "march[ing] forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, reports Peter Perl in The Washington Post Magazine. DeLay wants to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values.

Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Speaking at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory rally just before the GOP sweep of the 2002 midterm elections, he promised the faithful, "When we win this revolution in November, you'll be doing the Lord's work, and He will richly bless you for it!"

the intentional impoverishment of US citizens

The following story, coupled with the intent of the state of the union, represents further evidence that the US neo-feudal lords of capital have instituted and implemented their plans to reduce the US workforce, particularly the unionized one, to petty paupers equal to their third world counterparts. At some point all of the generation of capital and economic success will be taking place in Asia. If the US doesn't become a non-minimum wage, non-union production nation it will not be able to sustain any possibility for continued existence.

SBC Communications Inc. and AT&T Corp. plan to eliminate almost 13,000, or 12 percent, of their combined jobs if SBC's proposed $16 billion takeover of its former parent is approved. The companies presented the job figures to Wall Street analysts at a meeting Tuesday in New York. Executives emphasized that many of the job cuts would involve attrition, leaving empty positions unfilled.<>
Before the two companies unveiled their proposed merger earlier this week, SBC was already planning to cull 7,000 positions from its 163,000-member workforce by the end of 2005. AT&T, for its part, was planning to trim 5,000 positions from its workforce of 47,000. If all the cuts are added up, the staff would be reduced 12 percent for the combined company over the next few years.
The annual savings from the deal are seen at $200 million to $600 million by the second half of 2006, reaching $2.4 billion to $2.9 billion by 2009, according to the companies' executives. Nearly 60 percent of the expected savings will come from the elimination of jobs, they noted. <>Of the 13,000 job reductions, 1,700 would take place in sales, 3,400 in business operations and 5,125 jobs in engineering and network management. Other departments, including legal, human resources and advertising, would see some 2,600 jobs cut.
SBC executives say that about 12,000 workers leave the company voluntarily each year - mostly by retiring or finding other jobs - and that a lot of those empty positions would be eliminated. In the past, executives have said they wanted to avoid outright layoffs to prevent damaging the morale of remaining employees. <>To some extent, the company is also constrained by a new five-year contract it signed with union members in 2004. SBC has to offer new jobs elsewhere in the company to workers whose jobs are no longer deemed necessary. Unionized workers, who've seen their numbers dwindle in recent years, made job protection their top priority in the last round of negotiations. About 105,000 of SBC's 160,000 employees and 16,000 of AT&T's 47,000 workers are union members.
The planned job cuts are almost certain to result in some layoffs, but the companies won't offer specifics until the merger is closer to approval. Federal regulators could take up to a year or more to decide.Still, the two unions that represent telecommunications workers both issued statements in support of the merger. They say the combined company will cut fewer workers than if AT&T and SBC had remained separate. <>Indeed, AT&T has been shedding jobs rapidly over the past few years amid a steady erosion in sales. SBC has also eliminated thousands of jobs.