Dennis Kucinich's Convention Speech

Go, Dennis!

Lawrence Welk of American Politics

I saw this somewhere last week and couldn't resist quoting it. I have no idea who Mr. Shiblikov is, but he sure has some talent for dislike.


"McCain, the walking flag lapel pin, the embodiment of every vapid, stomach turning sentiment of Norman Rockwell paintings, the Lawrence Welk of American politics, the loaded .44 magnum with the hair trigger Uncle Sam has been pressing against his temple for the last 8 years. He would have been even better than Heath Ledger as The Joker. President McCain. Get used to it - and the continuation of America’s utter ruin."

--Mordechai Shiblikov

Proud Nancy

Nancy Pelosi is proud. In her speech at the Dems conventions she said as much:

"I am very proud of the Democrats in Congress.

Working with Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Senate, here are some of our accomplishments:

-- After years of inaction by Republicans, in our very first act, we passed the 9/11 Commission recommendations to protect the American people. That was just the beginning.

-- We helped rebuild the Gulf Coast for the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

-- We put recovery rebates into the hands of more than 130 million families.

-- We passed legislation to keep hard-working American families in their homes and to keep toxic toys out of the hands of our children.

-- We increased the minimum wage for the first time in ten years.

-- We improved fuel efficiency for the first time in 32 years.

-- We passed the largest college aid expansion since the G.I. Bill 64
years ago.

-- We passed the largest veterans' health care funding in the 77 year history of the Veterans Administration.

-- And, we enacted a new G.I. Bill to thank our veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by sending them to college."

I am tempted to examine these accomplishents one by one. Some of you will as surprised as I am to learn that college aid and auto fuel efficiency are both better, and that "hard-working" Americans can now stay in their homes. (Only the lazy lost their homes?) And the people of New Orleans have had their world "rebuilt," which means, I guess, their schools privatized and their homes gentrified. My favorite is that the bizarre recommendations of the bizarre 9/11 Commission, with the help of the Dems, are now protecting the us all. How does making a million passengers (including infants) at the Miami airport take off their shoes protect us exactly? I know a person, so insulted by the morons at airport security, that he threw his shoe at one. At that moment, at least, the world was more dangerous than before. There were no shoes thrown at airports before 9/11.

On what planet does Nancy Pelosi live?

If I weren't tired, I'd write a long list of what the Dems didn't do, the non-accomplishments. Here are just a few.

Impeach the president.
Impeach the vice president.
Prohibit torture.
Tell the truth.
Make peace.
Respect the Bill of Rights.

Now that holding cells have been fenced out of Denver parking lots and the National Guard has rented all those Denver hotel rooms for reasons that I assume will become clear, maybe someone will arrest the dems themselves for high crimes. The protesters, unwitting followers of the Hippocratic Oath, don't do much harm. But Nancy Pelosi, Dr Dean, and Giv'em Hell Harry are as guilty as Karl Rove and Cheney.

But at least they got rid of Toxic Barbie and those other dark Chinese toys.

"Ah, humanity," wrote Melville.

The Politics of Hypocrisy

I highly recommend the John Brown article excerpted below:

America in the World: Silenced by Bush

by John Brown

"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."

--André Gide

One of the legacies of Bush's tragically flawed foreign policy is that it has managed to silence Americans who believe that the United States -- for all its faults -- should condemn aggression in other parts of the world.

If one word describes how Bush has dealt with the rest of our small planet, it is hypocrisy. For the past eight years, the administration's deeds have seldom, if ever, matched its rhetoric. Operation Iraqi Freedom, it now seems clearer than ever, was in fact Operation Iraqi Oil. While the State Department issues human rights reports, the Bush/Cheney regime supports dictators who suppress the innocent. And in Eastern Europe, which the administration proclaims should be a region of peace and stability, it is heightening tensions by installing missile systems against "the Iranian threat."

To prevail in its so-called "war on terror" the White House has allowed the use of inhumane methods -- among them torture -- that go against basic American principles. In a crusade against those it labels as "terrorists" the administration established a detainee camp -- Guantanamo -- that violates fundamental justice.

-------------

I have to wonder if the "basic American principles" that Brown cites have changed. Richard Perle said not long ago that elections no longer matter in the US: his neocons have changed our culture. One change that seems sadly obvious to me is that we have lost the basic principles that made us condemn torture in the past. What in the world will save us? Obama? Pray it be so.

The rest of Brown's article is at Common Dreams.

Dangerous Laptops

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security has clarified its policy on seizing laptops at US borders. Ellen Nakashima writes, "Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies...."

One of the differences between protofascism and fascism, according to my friend David, is dissent. Fascists punish it. Yet it seems that we are moving very quickly toward a world where dissent equals treason and is punished. So before I back up my hard drive and delete any writings that might be interpreted as dangerous, I'll share with you Naomi Wolf's article from The Guardian of April 2007. "Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps."

Imagine, if some knuckle-headed border cop at the Miami airport had seized Thomas Paine's writings, he might have prevented the American Revolution.

Try to stay clear of the border till after the elections.

Open Letter to Obama

In the face of recent positions expressed by Senator Obama, I encourage you to read and sign an open letter that asks the candidate to hold strong to the positions that won him support in the primaries. Here's an excerpt:

"Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance–including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters."

The letter is signed by many of the people I most respect in the United States. Among them are Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gore Vidal, Jonathan Schell and Studs Terkel.

You can read the letter and add your signature on the Common Dreams website.

Since I vote in Arizona, a state famous for electing numbskulls, I'll vote for Cynthia McKinney. The Green Party has to start somewhere.

Bea for President

What Change?

The Center for Media and Democracy just published an interview with David Sirota that I recommend highly. Sirota, who writes about populism, points out the significant problems with MoveOn.org and Obama. Here's an excerpt:

SIROTA: "Obama's latest flip-flops are not moves to the "center" or the "mainstream" - by the empirical public opinion data on major issues, his moves are ones away from the center and from the mainstream. That's not surprising - he has surrounded himself by Washington insiders whose definition of "the center" is radically different from where the actual center of American public opinion is. If he continues down this path, he will hurt his chances of winning the election. I would advise him to remember where mainstream public opinion is on issues like trade, the war and civil liberties is - and instead of going to the center of a corrupt Washington, go there."

You can read the entire interview here.

Ecuador's Bankers

Yesterday Ecuador's government seized around 200 companies, including TV stations, associated with the now defunct Filanbanco. In the 1990s, bankers in Ecuador formed hundreds of companies (ghosts in many cases), wrote loans to the new companies from the banks they managed, sent the money off shore, and let the ghost companies go bankrupt. Nearly half of the banks collapsed after the money was stolen and the bankers fled the country to enjoy their stolen millions as Ecuadorian account holders suffered the loss of their savings. The theft was far too much for deposit insurance to cover.

For the last few years, the Ecuadorian government has pushed to recover the assets that guaranteed the false loans, but, as is the S&L crisis in the US, they discovered that the assets were wildly overvalued or protected by transfers to new owners who claim to have no connection with the bank thieves whom the country has not been able to extradite.

Critics of yesterday's seizures are claiming that the Correa government seized the TV stations in an attempt to control the media, yet even most journalists support the seizures.

The issue is yet another example of the failure of contemporary "democracy." Only the very wealthy or their surrogates can afford to get elected and once elected they buy the news media and control the wealth of nations. For many years, the bankers in Ecuador controlled the government just as the weapons makers have taken control in the US. President Correa is perhaps the only president who is trying to give control back to the people and effect justice. Yet the odds of rebuilding a system of government in a country with one of the worst systems of public education in the new world are very slim. Populist candidates here have bought votes by throwing around five-dollar bills and making absurd promises.

Correa promised to sell the seized companies at auction, but only a handful of Ecuadorians can afford to buy a Television company. What if Rupert Murdoch shows up at the auction?

See today's BBC story Ecuador head defends TV seizures

The Collapse of Tower Seven

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is about to publish its findings on the collapse of World Trade Tower Seven, which fell the day after the Twin Towers. The official story will present evidence that the building just got hot and melted, defying all laws of physics. Witnesses described a controlled demolition, but the government, apparently unaware of the melting temperature of steel, will claim that the tower melted.

The tower, located across the street from the Twin Towers, was occupied by the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defence and the Office of Emergency Management, which would co-ordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack. Since all the steel and rubbish from the building was immediately hauled away and melted, it's hard to know what the experts actually studied.

Here's the BBC article about the explanation.

And here's a film of what is clearly a controlled demolition.