You've gotta--just gotta--watch this!

Puhleeze click here for a quick movie capturing our Orwellian--or should I say, Domino's--future.

I dare anybody

to check these photos of the children of Iraq and still support our invasion of their country.

How the world sees us

This essay is right on on the subject of the fantasy of Bushies (of many Americans, too, alas) that the US is a respected nation with ideas and ideals that are emulated by the world. Not so, citing facts and figures.

One significant omission: I believe that increasingly even the youth of foreign lands are rejecting the compulsive consumerism of America. Maybe not consumerism, but the American style, because of their distaste for the government that fosters it.

This could get ugly

For more than a year, I've been posting on the subject of the prospect that the nations (Japan, China and Europe, chiefly) that have been purchasing and holding assets in dollars, including our federal debt instruments and stocks in American companies, would tire of doing so as the value of the dollar against other currencies declines. The Bush administration has telegraphed that it wants the dollar to decline so that foreign nations will be able to afford our products, thereby causing increasing sales of US goods abroad. This may benefit the corporations that export, but the decline of the dollar has a distinct downside for American consumers, namely, that the cheaper dollar can buy fewer imports (cars, computers, everything, actually), so that price inflation begins to take hold in the US, coupled with interest-rate increases as the US must increase the interest rate on its debt in order to attract buyers on the instruments.

It looks like the dollar is losing out to the euro lately in terms of foreign holdings. Will the nightmare of inflation, increasing interest rates and less purchasing by consumers then follow, causing a catastrophic decline in the condition of the US economy?

If I were a betting man, I'd say, buy euros.

I wish I'd said that

For a quick take on Bush's plans for the world as announced in his inaugural address, check out this article, the opening line of which reads, "After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist."

Tough duty

That US Army. A bunch of toughies, strong sense of justice and discipline. Why, after court martial conviction for "shooting a female civilian interpreter in the head" one soldier was sentenced to three years, a second soldier to eighteen months, in the stockade. Three whole years, eighteen whole months!

Sign me up!

I don't like the sound of this

but this essay, quoting various highly placed Democrats in favor of a preemptive strike on Iran, makes a strong case that we the people--we the good people--are the only ones who can keep the Bushies from launching yet another war.

Don't read my son's lips

After most inspiring speeches, like Bush's inauguration address was, I'm sure, supposed to be, the president's supporters are supposed to be elucidating and expanding on its meaning, to carry it out into the world. Not with this president, however. His ravings about "spreading freedom" throughout the world have so alarmed other nations that Bush's father has had to insert correcting provisos and explanations, to make sure his son's madness isn't taken seriously.

The Selling of MLKing

This post about the hypocrisy of the Right's recent attempts to appropriate Martin Luther King to their side is right on. I've been noticing it too, and it cannot stand. King, at the end, was a rabid antiwar, anti-Rightist. His last expressions were of utter frustration and rage and the broad range of inequities based on race, poverty, capitalist oppression--much broader than merely segregation and voting rights. The whitewashing of his positions and role in America must be brought to light, so that the religious right can't rewrite history and claim as their own this strong and important man.

How can you not feel sorry for what we've done to law-abiding Iraqis?

Just read this post from Riverbend. We've turned her country into a theater of war. A war between the US and the Middle East.

The rant of a madman?

I didn't--couldn't bring myself to--watch Bush's inaugural speech, but Justin Raimondo did, and if his analysis of Bush's rhetoric is accurate, I'm glad I didn't waste my time tuning in. I need all the time I can get to gather weapons and ammunition.

Four more years

This article about the brand-new "grim assessment" of Iraq's future by a commission of intelligence officers not only contradicts Bush's Pollyanna-ish outlook for that nation after the elections, but contains a hint of what we can expect from the Administration if things continue to go poorly. The Shiites will gain power in the elections, the Sunnis and others will continue to wage violent insurgency, the Shiites will try to placate them by setting a firm schedule for US withdrawal of its forces (the US will be consulted no doubt, and there'll be conditions and caveats galore) and then as the time-limits arrive and we commence withdrawal, leaving a "residual force" or something, Bush will claim victory. He'll have saved face, the NeoCons will have their vested power in Iraq to control the Middle East and protect Israel, and Iraq, though still torn apart by fractious war, will be no threat to anybody except itself.

Okay, so the article doesn't say all of the foregoing, but I do.

If you ever doubted that Bush was the creature of American corporations

check out this list of donors to his inaugural celebrations.

I'm becoming anti-American

And why not? We're barbarians.

Altruism or some other -ism?

I don't know, but to me any religion, Christian or Muslim or any other, that uses the entree that is provided by the needy's need arising from the tsunami for prosetylizing is worthy of disgust and outrage and more.

This is really unpleasant for me to realize

but there are few things going on the United States today that I approve of. On the eve of MLK's day celebration, I don't think we've come very far from the early sixties, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Have blacks and browns and other nonwhites gained in income, in status, in fundamental equity? A look at the stats says no. The persons of color are woefully over-represented on death row, in prisons, in poverty, in lack of insurance and income. They're still doing our most onerous, least rewarding (income-wise and otherwise) jobs. They're still not able to participate meaningfully in many social events--not because of laws, but worse, by ongoing social custom, something harder to amend.

Internationally, the US is at its nadir. We've never been so misguided, so hated. We're the evil empire, so regarded throughout the world, including among many of our traditional allies.

Economically, we're headed into an abyss of excess spending, due to an orgy of defense spending and a loss of income. We can't support our own, much less others', infirm and helpless. We've misspent our resources on wasteful adventures that cause wreckage of the planet and distrust throughout the world.

The inequities of earnings and wealth in the world are increasing; the waste of resources is profilgate; the lessons of these are unheeded. We are lost and have no desire to find our way. Is it time to bail out of America?

Why not?

Fallujah failure

By now, no one reading this blog is other than a Bush-bashing, Cheney-loathing leftist. But even those must read this evaluation of the US actions in Fallujah.

Isn't there anything we can do to save these people, and ourselves, from these evil warmongers?

No comfort at all

Now that Bush won the election, he's publicly eating his words--expressing regrets over the phrase "Bring 'em on!" for example--but meanwhile he's packing his administration with yea-sayers and proceeding along with his announced agenda of "staying the course" in Iraq, privatizing Social Security, limiting lawsuits and so forth.

So if he's doing precisely what he said he'd do, why has his approval rating plummeted? His approval numbers, which hovered in the 52% range in the weeks before the election (as opposed to Kerry's 48%), are now in the mid-40's, as low as any president's on the eve of inauguration.

Could it be that a majority of us hate this asshole, but that at least he's an asshole we know, as opposed to one we never learned to know?

Did you know this?

That some of the prisoners being held in the abu Graib prison are being taken to a courthouse to be tried in court? Apparently some escaped while being transported, otherwise I sure didn't know that was happening.

What court is trying them? What are the charges? Is there coverage allowed of the trials and if so, why aren't we being clued in by any media? And if the trials aren't public--as Saddam Hussein's trials were not--what's that about it the "democracy" that's being showcased in Iraq?

And the rope handcuffs? Does this story give off a bit of an odor to you?

Don't let Bush get away with it

Here's the deal. The Bushies have lately been downgrading expectations for the election, and will soon be downgrading the expectations for the occupation itself. After the January 30 election, chaos will reign in Iraq, we all know that--even the administration predicts it--but what will happen is that our troops will withdraw into the many bases we've built in Iraq and will therefore suffer fewer deaths while they watch what plays out in Iraq. Craziness, of course, but our forces will intrude only when the craziness begins to impinge on the actions of the pro-US government that is bound to be elected.

Bottom line: Bush will claim victory in Iraq by the establishment of a large US force in the nation to watchdog its government and police its politics so that it remains loyal to the US. What this will look like, precisely, is the Vichy government of France, where the Nazis allowed the southern French to run their domestic affairs with Nazi oversight, largely because the Nazis couldn't afford the money and troops to be full-time enforcers in the region, but they nevertheless maintained fierce control.

There won't be anything like "democracy" in Iraq. It will be a cauldron of conflict and misery--but it will be our cauldron. We'll be in place, wedged into and in control of the country and its assets and its politics.

Bottom, bottom line: This is, of course, why our soldiers died: so we could control Iraq. The same reason Caesar's legions and Alexander's armies died. Not for democracy, for empire.