So, guess what? Saying you don’t like Bush won’t only get you excluded from public events, but it’ll actually get you denied a government contract – at least if you’re dealing with HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson. Sure, it’s illegal, but since when did that stop these assholes?
Not only do you lose contracts but… I know several people who are part of the local UPJ group who worked for Ball Brothers Research and had their security clearances either pulled or reduced in scope after they were at a peace demonstration against heir dictatordorp. They weren’t arrested or anything just there. The manager called them into his office and showed them pictures taken by ?? of them standing their holding a sign and told them to not do that any more or else..
Ray Talafart at KGO is as big a surrender monkey as anyone else on the left is. ( Mike Malloy maybe excluded). He had several callers this morning that he put down for suggesting that maybe we do something other than wish for impeachment. ASSHOLE :fu::mad::rant1::growl:
I am beginning to learn that when I hear those drums to push the mute button for three minutes.
Riley actually got something said in the first fifteen minutes absolutely amazing.
Hundred of thousands of people lost everything but the headline reads
Post-Katrina real estate booming
The thugs are making out like bandits.. wait.. maybe that why we call them thugs.
Well talking to myself is almost as fun on the blog as it is sitting here.
When they had that film of Zarkowi having trouble with his machine gun the first thought to come to mind was that insurgencies have managers too.
Newark is where the Russian ICBM will land when it comes in long. In that case does it really matter though ??
Dude, I’m probably on some kind of list now ’cause I’m associated with the morning sditionists:paranoid: I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with that rollin’ around in my head. Oh, well, later.
Oh, and I think the mailman has been stealing my mail!:growl:
They have mailmen in Alaska ?? I thought you Alaskans got on your dog sled and mushed down to the post office.
So is it still dark at midnight in Anchor Town or is it beginning to be daylight 24 hours a day yet ??
Nope. Still dark at midnight. Anchor Town should hit 59 degrees this Sat.:omg: That’s good considering it snowed a couple days ago. But, ah, the snow’s mostly all gone now. I ahve to hit the hay which is next to the sleigh:santacool:Later
The though for this morning
With the advent of High def TV maybe they could put a color printer on the TV so you could make copies of the FAUX news hosts on some toilet paper.
🙁 sorry for killing the mood….I feel like I did.
Comment by Gaijinda — May 10, 2006 @ 4:32 am
Not at all. Quite the contrary. Trashing Hillary usually GETS me in the mood. :hubba:
Hi Gaijinda, if you’re still up.
Good morning sheeple. The thunderstorms stopped yesterday morning at around the same time Bush’s motorcade left for Sun City Center. Go figure.
Glad it’s gone, though. Not the rain… the rain is useful and makes life better. Unlike Bush, who DESTROYS life.
:fu:
Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and Sparks on Gilmore Girls last night!
:banana::banana::banana:
The DLC and the DCCC ( I always read that as CPPP) should be informed that there will be severe penalties if they nominate Hillary in 08. Now it is up to you to figure out how your 25 bucks is going to cause severe penalties.
No Rachel prescription drugs are not things to make fun of. People die because they don’t have prescription drugs. Are you going to make a joke of WWIII too ??
Maybe the affiliate stations should move Stephie into Rachel’s Time slot she is truly funny at times.:roll::yawn::omg:
howdy!
diplomacy is not a word in their vocabulary…scary! Gaijinda, i also was riled up after the ritter interview!
Rachel’s blog has Ron and captn_crusty who show up every morning to help make funnies they are not very funny either.:mad::mad::mad::fu:
podcast is up!
from Salon (i post it all since you have to subscribe.)
Didn’t we fight a war in Vietnam thirty years ago..?? Did we lean anything from that misadventure ??. Apparently not..:(:(:mad::omg::rant1:
for what it’s worth dept: the mr says Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli is a very good General.
this admin rewards failure time and again…what is IT about them? My gawd. AND, why has this country held no one accountable for 9-11? Rice, Hayden, Cheney, Bush…..I just don’t get it.
. While at the NSA, he tried to implement the expensive, ambitious “Trailblazer” program, aimed at upgrading NSA’s technology, but analysts have deemed the outcome a multibillion-dollar bust. Meanwhile, even a number of prominent Republicans have attacked his bypassing of laws protecting our civil liberties, under Bush’s direction—conducting unauthorized taps on the e-mail and phone conversations of at least 5,000 Americans.
[…]
This ability to accommodate totalitarian values in exchange for career advancement is viewed as a terrific asset by Negroponte, who handpicked Hayden for this new job within hours of Goss’ abrupt resignation.[…]
kind of a mess of a block quote above, and long….sorry ’bout that….guess i’m just a little ticked off….. i’ll cut it down a bit…
Negroponte’s hand in the pick of the new CIA chief is scary to me. Negroponte, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Hayden now running the US. That’s what America gets for not paying attention.
one of the few things I’m mad at clinton for is that he didn’t “bury”those guys when he had a chance…they should all have been jailed and have not been allowed to resurface years later.
Clinton did almost nothing to reverse what RayGun and Bush one did. We can blame him for a lot of today’s problems. Like it does a lot of good to blame anyone.
Bill Clinton, to me, was Slick Willy. That’s what I didn’t like about him. I never knew what he really believed. And, it looks like Hillary believes that’s the way to become president so she is adopting the same style. I hate it! America needs better than that.
No more DLC democrats.. but if that’s all you get are you just not going to vote. ?? The Democraps leaning to the right is probably one reason a lot of people don’t vote. They can’t see any difference between Dems and thugs.
you’d think, wouldn’t you….
well, blame helps when you feel helpless; what else ya gonna do with this train wreck in office?!
you have to vote or you get what we have which is worse. it’s so often just a question of do you vote for bad or badder.
i don’t think I have actually voted for a candidate ( other than maybe Slick Willy) in the last 12 years or so. I voted against the other candidate instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I WILL vote and I will vote for the Democrats, every last one of them. Because when push comes to shove even a seemingly good republican will vote with their party. Ex. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins.
interesting history of this ship:
I have voted for real republicans for county and local government and one year for the state legislature ( because the dems didn’t run anyone). The local Dem party machine sometimes comes up with some real losers.
oh my,
Slaying of 2 Journalists Adds to Profession’s Toll
The TV reporters, both Sunnis, are the latest of 95 from their calling to lose their lives since the war began. Most of the victims are Iraqis.
i also voted for a local republican, a friend. not sure i will again this next time around, though, as he didn’t do what he said he’d do. that’s the problem, like isi says, when push comes to shove they’ll support each other at the expense of what is the right thing to do. I’ll vote for him in the primary (i’ll have to register repub :priest: which is fine because it confuses my neighbors! :hubba: ) because i think the repub opposing him is a wack-job.
off to do the walk, later guys.
Good Morning :joe:
Hey Krista too much :joe::omg: here
Now I’m pulling for Katherine Harris to stay in the race! The Bush Brothers thought they could use and abuse her and that she would always do what they want. Not! Good for her, I say! F**k the Bush Brothers!
Hey everybody-
Check RIPcoco for a great Dowd!
Isi, thanks for the great Ivins- I also put the over there…Dowd is all the way on the bottom…for those of you who arent following Perch/Bass-gate.
Harris would make a nice anchor for the Bush brothers
Hey Fred, here, maybe you need some o’ this :bong:
According to huffpo, Bush wont even KISS her anymore…oh my!
She is like the town slut that all the boys turn on after theyve used her up….
Who was just asking if she is OK?…was it Jeaneane?…Whoever was talking was saying that she has been through so much…loss of loved ones and high emotion, and that shes really NOT alright in any sense of the word. But then, I dont think she has ever been sane, even a little!
and its not just how she looks and carries herself either…there is just something really loopy about her…evil!
Hey y’all. Thanks for the Molly Ivins and the Carrier story, FK. Just listening to last night’s ahow, with Ari Berman. Interesting how the Bush administration has come up with a scandal that combines all the past scandals into one. You have to wonder if this will finally all fall down on them, or if they’re be a “terrorist” attack necessitating the imposition of martial law and the “temporary” suspension of elections. Then everyone in the executive branch can start wearing military uniforms.
Damn straight. And I hope she runs for prez in ’08.
Well, somebody did say she was full of spunk, didn’t they?
What? Was it something I said?
PJ: So what are you going to be doing in DC ??
I’m going to be developing some web-based training and certification modules for Smithsonian staff, and if I get all of that done, I guess I’ll be doing some other general web-type stuff. They say they encourage their interns to get out and see the museums, so I hope I can get some “insider” tours. I’ve always wanted a moon rock.
Although, I’m starting to thing that most of what I’ll be doing is moving my van from one side of the street to the other, and rinsing my socks and underwear out in sinks and drinking fountains.
DC has a kind of poor reputation for being a place to live on a small income. The area northeast of the capital used to be pretty seedy
Real estate prices are outrageous. Rental prices aren’t quite as bad, but one needs to find a room in a house someplace (which is what I’m trying for). Unfortunately, nobody seems to want me.
You would think that there would be people around Gerrge Washington University that would have rooms for rent.
There are – also Georgetown, American U, Howard, UM, and others – but apparently there’s a large demand and nobody’s in the market for an old bastid such as myself. Plus, you pay a premium for every step closer to a metro station.
Isn’t that housing descrimination ?? Do the schools own the housing ??
Having a Muslim version of the Bush regime in the middle east is certainly causing them problems.. The Palestinian authority is having their funds cut off, their water cut off and now their gasoline supply cut off. How long before Putin comes to their rescue ?? ( wouldn’t that be interesting)
Well, nobody has said they didn’t want me ‘cuz I’m old, and anyway, you’re entitled to discriminate when it comes to having people live in your own home. These are summer sublets of rooms in houses, and I think it’s just a lot easier for people who live somewhere near the area to come over and meet the folks.
The school-owned housing is way expensive, and most of the time involves sharing a room. Sharing a house is OK, but I’m too freakin’ old to share a room with anybody other than my wife, or maybe a hot, self-loathing co-ed with failing eyesight and poor judgement.
The naivety of the left wing media.. Solve all you problems through voting them out.. They conviently don’t tell you what to do in the mean time. How long can you go without food ?? Until 2008 ??
Hartman needs to stick his head in the toilet and flush it three times for that comment.
Wow, “peripatetic preparations” – I like that. I’ll have to find a way to work that phrase into daily conversation.
I wouldn’t think they would let non students live in school owned housing. if there is a waiting line I suppose home owners can pick and choose. I knew someone who lived in a Brothel while he was in college.. He said it took him about three months to figure out what the ladies were doing for a living. I was always suspicious of the three girls that lived with six guys in a house too. I went to grad school with one of the girls and she seemed perfectly normal even a bit liberated so it may have been quite legit.
Wow, a robot cockroach spy.
.
Well, I am actually a student, if not one of theirs. Plus, most of their students are presumably away for the summer (probably partaking in peripatetic preparations toward prodding their parents to part with their paltry pay to purchase iPods), so this is a good way to get some $. Lots of colleges open their housing to non-students (for summer housing, short-term stays, conferences, etc.). A buck’s a buck.
I have always though of rethugs as a type of cockroach.. The most recent ones all look the same too. I wonder which program created which revision.
That is did the rethug robot program create the cockroach or did the cockroach program create the robot rethugs. ??
You have to be a student registered for at least one class in the current semester/program in the Colorado State Higher ed System to live in the student housing. We had a couple of interns last summer that got evicted because they weren’t taking a class and we had to find them a place to live. One was a cute 20 year old girl but she didn’t go for the room offer.:cry::eek::tongue:
Political comedy often is intended to stir controversy, but this doesn’t usually involve broadcasting rights and the public affairs network C-SPAN.
The cable network asked two Internet video providers, YouTube and IFILM, to pull clips of Stephen Colbert’s April 29 performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner from their Web sites.
C-SPAN said it contacted the companies because the copyrighted material was posted online without its permission.
Both YouTube and IFILM complied with the request.
Don’t dirty your browser by going here but this is where it came from
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194830,00.html
And what do I get if I beleve this.. ??
Tehran – The former US embassy in Tehran could soon see a new chapter in its troubled history, with a top Iranian commander calling for the downtown compound to be turned into a “Great Satan Park”.
“We would be able to nicely show off the American crimes to citizens strolling in the park,” General Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh told the official news agency IRNA.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1930302,00.html
The letter from the president of IRAN to heir dictatordorp
Mr George Bush,
President of the United States of America
For sometime now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions
that exist in the international arena — which are being constantly debated, specially in political
forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain unanswered. These have
prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hopes that it might
bring about an opportunity to redress them.
Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ (PBUH), the great Messenger of God,
Feel obliged to respect human rights,
Present liberalism as a civilization model,
Announce one’s opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMDs,
Make “War and Terror” his slogan,
And finally,
Work towards the establishment of a unified international community – a community which
Christ and the virtuous of the Earth will one day govern,
But at the same time,
Have countries attacked; The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on
the slight chance of the … of a … criminals in a village city, or convoy for example the entire
village, city or convey set ablaze.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12984.htm
Great, now we have Russia to worry about again. Or is all this a scheme cooked up by Cheney and Condi and Rummy to re-energize the military industrial complex?
Hey, I feel safe with these guys in charge.
Does any of you podcasters out there have Chuck D’s show from the 7th?
BREAKING NEWS FLASH DROP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING and check out this special emergency edition of…
CRUELLA WATCH!:omg:
From the St Petersburg Times website. Allan Bense will NOT run in the Florida Repig primary, leaving Ms. Thang as the only candidate currently in the race.
http://tinyurl.com/nxocv
If the Repigs can’t cough up another candidate by noon Friday, it’s Harris vs. Nelson in November for all the marbles.
I’m guessing that Jeb began to be the subject of much begging shortly after Bense’s announcement, especially since the younger and pudgier Bush brother has been so vocal about Harris not having a prayer against Nelson’s $10-million-plus war chest. (Second only to Hillary among the Dems, a fun fact I wasn’t aware of until last night.)
And Nelson’s $10 million is actual money, not a wet dream whispered into Sean Hannity’s ear.
If Jeb (or someone else) decides to take one for the team, we still have a contest. If not, let the unraveling of the bitch continue.
:banana::banana::banana:
Ah, hello…Did everyone fall asleep at their desk? Damn Ambien!
Not me. I’ve been busy hovering my mouse over the “Theatre” in the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre link on the sidebar.
Not asleep… yet…give me about 40 minutes
:rofl2: that is fun, isn’t it?
So doing everything possible to end the war in IRAQ and prevent the war in IRAN to Rhodes and Sarandon is to go to DC and march around the white house with the best cardboard tube and biggest construction paper sign they can find.. :omg::mad::eek:
I guess Gandhi did the same and the British just got tired of arresting them ?? :rant1:
OOPs
Rhodes got something really wrong :eek::eek:
She said that Bush inherited a 250 billion dollar surplus and turned it into a 7 trillion dollar deficit.
In 2000 when Bush took office the debt was around 3.2 trillion but Clinton reported , without a doubt using social security income, a 250 billion dollar budget surplus.
Bush has subsequently turned the budget surplus into a loss of around 3.8 trillion in the last six years. In other words he turned a profit of 250 billion into a loss of 650 billion each year during his presidorkski.
Jimi Hendrix performing Voodoo Child
at Berkely 1970
the latest archive “on the real” show on airamericaplace is april 16.
i heard chuck d’s show on may 7th. any particular reason why you want a podcast of it?
Apparently there is some connection between the people illegally crossing the boarder and the Mexican Government.. surprise, surprise.. The INS management is telling the Mexican Government about the movements of the minute men and associated groups so that they don’t interact improperly..pissing off both the INS agents and the minute men… Humm…
http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=4885374&nav=HMO6HMaY
Actually, it sounds like Randi is confusing the national debt with the budget deficit. Clinton’s last year had something like a $236 billion budget surplus – meaning the US government took in more than it spent. Unfortunately, due to years of deficit spending, the national debt had reached something like $5.6 trillion. Once Bush got hold of things, he immediately ran annual budget deficts, in the $300 to over $400 billion range. Tha national debt had climbed to almost $6.8 trillion by 2003, and is currently something like $8.3 trillion.
I guess that just makes Bush look worse than he is but its also wrong in keeping with her normal high degree of accuracy in reporting.
The use of the social security funds as tax income is a bit confusing too since it adds about 175 billion to the income numbers that really shouldn’t be there.
Yeah, to tell you the truth, I rarely listen to her anymore. You’d think she was the only one in world that had the straight poop, and that she was the only one trying to save the country.
There’s an interesting page here on the debt and deficits.
WASHINGTON – The House Wednesday passed a bill sought by President Bush to deliver tax cuts worth $70 billion to investors and to keep 15 million taxpayers from being hit by the alternative minimum tax
The House passed the measure by a 244-185 vote. The Senate is expected to clear the bill Thursday.
The bill provides a two-year extension of the reduced 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends, currently set to expire at the end of 2008.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12726774 /
——————
Greedy AHOLES :fu::fu::fu::growl::growl::mad::mad::omg:
Hartman is going to be flying the Majoity Report for the next three nights if you care..
Another Georgia Republican bites the dust. She’s been in trial and for her to agree to 8 years, the trial must not have been going so swell.
Schrenko pleads guilty
Former State School Superintendent Linda Schrenko pleaded guilty this morning to defrauding the government and money laundering.
She has been sentenced to eight years in prison and is waiving her right to appeal. She faced a maximum 25 years on the charges.
8 is way better than 25, that’s for sure.
that’s for sure. Well, at least she got a face-lift with the money…
what IS it about these republicans and money? My gawd, they just have to use it for corruption…it’s like they have a disease or something.
Keith Richards’ Brain Just Fine
by Gina Serpe
May 10, 2006, 9:20 AM PT
The Rolling Stones want everyone to know that Keith Richards hasn’t suffered any brain damage–at least not stemming from his latest misadventure.
A rep for the rock band has emphatically denied a report in the New Zealand Herald that the hard-living, accident-prone guitarist has undergone two surgeries for his head injury earlier this month and that his condition is much more serious than first thought. The spokeswoman claims that the coconut- (or Jet Ski-) induced incident–has been grossly overblown.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
“Keith Richards did not undergo a second operation,” Fran Curtis said in a statement Wednesday. “The first and only operation was done on Monday, May 8, and was 100 percent successful. There was no brain damage. He continues to improve as expected.”
Tyger Thom!:omg:
I’m going to call my Rethuglican Congressman and thank him for passing that tax bill – it will help unseat him. conservobot
Jimmy Carter was no Hugo Chavez, but his replacement was a fucking corporate nazi.
Hey, they gotta grab what they can, while they can. I think they’re afraid they’ll be out on their asses before too long. I hope that’s the case – way too much can happen between now and the election. Seems like people would start to catch on that these people have truly proven they cannot govern. As Graham Nash might say, they’re King Midas in reverse.
If Republicans have been such criminals in the political realm (as Hartmann and others [rightly] charge), why do the Democrats let them get away with it? Carter’s campaign being sabotaged, etc.
B. Kennedy is a mainstream Democrat. I still like him.
The corporate tekeover of Iraq:
http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese05102006.html
Grrrr connection trouble all day. Ok. Testing. :love::oops::razz::roll: Please let this post.
Bobby Kennedy is cool, I met him when I did some work with Riverkeeper up here. He’s very active and does good work fighting the corporations re: pollution
Ha! but you’re right, a lot can happen. There are Ralph Reed yard signs up around here. That’s like putting a sign in your yard saying you love political corruption. huh?
bk is definately a good egg in my book, too.
I’m just listening to that Springsteen albumn Marc was talking about – The Seeger Sessions. I like it. It’s strange to hear Bruce singing the Erie Canal song, since it’s something they start teaching you here in Syracuse at birth. In fact, when I look out my bathroom window in the morning, I can watch the sun rise over a part of the Erie Canal – it’s a major goose tourist spot.
I like Bobby, too. He seems like his heart’s in the right place. He has that spasmodic dysphonia thing, doesn’t he? At least, it sure reminds me of Diane Rehm.
Seeger Sessions? I don’t know that one! I dig Bruce. Seeger also. What a great combination that would be. Seeger is like 80 something years old and he still is amazing, creative, and active. Yeah, and very aware of NY State ecological causes. He comes down here to Croton-on Hudson everyear and does his thing for Riverkeeper.
I remember the Erie Canal from when I spent time in Syracuse (my friend took me to a Police concert at SU’s carrier Dome)
Hey, I’m not good with economics and so forth, so forgive me for asking what might seem an obvious question, but why is it that they assume that if they give the big corporations tax breaks that they’ll “take it upon themselves” to make jobs? Isn’t that a huge assumption? They can do anything they want with their money. And haven’t they been, over the years, eliminating jobs (for the most part) not making them? I’m not enlightened, I realize that, but the whole thing just seems like a huge logical falacy. (listening to Thom)
Hey FoggyB,
A friend of mine wanted the May 7 Chuck D show because there was a musician on that he really liked.
Well, SusanJ, It is silly to think that giving big corps a tax break will magically create jobs. There has to be a demand for the product or service before more jobs can be created and if people are struggling to get by there won’t be much of a demand for anything. If you give tax breaks to folks, they go out and spend it on what they need, there by creating a demand for products and services which causes the corps to need to create more jobs for the increased demand. Raygun’s “trickle down” theory was a load of crap because there’s nothing left for the lower class folks by the time upper and middle management hog it all.
That makes sense 👿
Handouts to corporations need not be a bad thing–if the government plays a role in how the subsidy is spent. (handshake)
But in the US, the government plays no role in where the handout goes. (emptyhand) And that is what Krista is getting at.
Jeffrey St. Clair is a political writer (!) who does much good work. (He is Cockburn’s collaborator at CounterPunch.) He can’t stand Springsteen. Says he is an opportunist. I mean he really has it in for Bruce. St. Clair is no dummy; why would he write such things? (I am not being surly here.)
I will post some of St. Clair’s Bruce writings here–when I have time.
I snuffed the blog!:omg:
Jeffrey St. Clair is a political writer (!) who does much good work. (He is Cockburn’s collaborator at CounterPunch.) He can’t stand Springsteen. Says he is an opportunist. I mean he really has it in for Bruce. St. Clair is no dummy; why would he write such things? (I am not being surly here.)
I will post some of St. Clair’s Bruce writings here–when I have time.
Well if that’s true he wouldn’t be the first celeb to be that way… still one man’s point of view, but could be true I guess. I think it’s always best with celebrities to a) enjoy their music b) if they work with charity have a positive political stance respect them a little more than for just the music c) enjoy the whole rock ‘n roll fantasy of the thing.
One thing I do know about Bruce is that they love him in Freehold, Asbury, etc. and he keeps going back there, putting money and time into the decaying beach towns and so on. He’s a positive presence there. Although my pal Mikey Burns from Lakewood swears his dad grew up with Bruce and Bruce always borrowed money and never paid back 😛
Old Jeffy doesn’t like Bono much, either.
krista, the only way i know to listen to archive shows of chuck d is to go to airamericaplace. they seem to have the shows available there about a month after show-time. i don’t have any recordings of any of his shows myself.
chuck always has terrific musicians as his guests. i think he has one of the best shows on air america. 😎
I have to go, now. Therefore, cannot comment on Bruce…Thanks for the responses. Will get back to this tomorrow….
:omg:
Oh, gosh, well, I guess we’d better just give up then.
i kill children while stealing peoples mail!
:banana::banana::banana:
Less than 40 min to show time and Tyger Thom, sitting in for Sam and Janeane, is on the stream.
:bow::bow::banana::banana::banana::banana::bow::bow:
the dead kennedy’s are sweet!
I think Lou Dobbs is right on this:
-Lou Dobbs
5/10/06
malloy talked about this tonight
The “New Totalitarianism” now defines a desperate neo-con end game
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
May 2, 2006
http://www.opednews.com
As the Bush/neo-con kleptocracy disintegrates in a toxic cloud of military defeat, economic bankruptcy, environmental disaster and escalating mega-scandal, its attack on basic American freedoms—its “New Totalitarianism”—has escalated to a desperate new level, including brutal Soviet-style prosecutions against non-violent dissidents and an all-out offensive for state secrecy, including an attack on the internet.
In obvious panic and disarray, the GOP right has turned to a time-honored strategy—kill the messengers. While it slaughters Americans and Iraqis to “bring democracy” to the Middle East, it has made democracy itself public enemy Number One here at home.
The New Totalitarianism has become tangible in particular through a string of terrifying prosecutions against non-violent dissenters, an attack on open access to official government papers, and the attempted resurrection by right-wing “theorists” of America’s most repressive legislation, dating back to the 1950s, 1917 and even 1797.
Bush’s universal spy campaign is the cutting edge of the assault. The GOP Attorney-General has told Congress both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln engaged in electronic wiretapping. He has deemed the Geneva war crimes accords a “quaint” document and treats the Bill of Rights the same way.
Evidence of no-warrant spying on thousands of US citizens continues to surface. Like all totalitarian regimes, this one believes its best defense is to terrorize its citizenry by intruding, Big Brother-like, into all facets of personal life. Inevitably, it is moving prosecute whoever reveals that spying is going on, including a KGB-style search for the hero who leaked Bush’s warrantless wire-tap program.
Along with spying comes official secrecy. The Bush regime is reclassifying millions of pages of harmless, marginal documents to prevent public scrutiny. It demands access to the papers of the deceased investigative reporter Jack Anderson so they can be reclassified. It has moved to prosecute reporters, government officials and even lobbyists who have used documents in ways the administration doesn’t like.
In Ohio, the official secrecy has entered the state level. Governor Bob Taft, the first sitting criminal governor in Ohio history, is moving to classify thousands of pages of state policy papers. Taft recently admitted to four misdemeanor crimes involved with Tom Noe, a Republican hack now under both state and federal indictment.
Noe can’t explain the whereabouts of some $15 million in state funds he supposedly invested. Taft says any documents that allow him to make policy are “privileged.” As critics point out, if an aide hands him even a copy of a published newspaper, it becomes covered under “executive privilege” in the first time in Ohio history, and its “mis-use” can be a crime.
Should the trend expand, US citizens could find themselves shut out of access to even the most rudimentary official information at all levels, down to the smallest town.
Simultaneously, prosecutions against dissenters have dramatically escalated. Taft walked away from his convictions with a small fine and an apology. But a community organizer here has been sentenced to 119 days in jail for speaking out at a Columbus School Board meeting. A severe diabetic, Jerry Doyle has been temporarily turned away from his jail sentence due to life-threatening health problems. But authorities intend to imprison Doyle while Taft walks free.
Ironically, Doyle was initially charged with trespassing at the podium although he had an authorized speaker’s slip. He was complaining about a school official, Sheri Bird-Long who stole some $200,000 from the school system, pleaded guilty to one felony count of having an unlawful interest in a public contract and one misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of property, a theft-related offense. Unlike Doyle, Bird-Long got no jail time upon conviction.
In Cleveland Heights, Carol Fisher has been charged with a major felony for putting posters on public lamp-posts. The posters are critical of the Bush attack on Iraq. Fisher, who is committed to non-violence, was assaulted by local police who ordered her to take down the posters, then threw her down on the ground and charged her with felonious assault.
“I am 53 years old,” she says, “not exactly a spring chicken. A hand comes down to push my chin against the concrete. By this time there are four cops on the scene. My hands are tightly cuffed behind my back. They lift me up and shove me onto a park bench and shackle my legs. I am still calling out, telling people what this is about.”
Fisher says the police cursed her, shouting “Shut up or I will kill you!…I am sick of this anti-Bush shit!…You are definitely going to the psyche ward.” Fisher now faces years in prison and the loss of her livelihood.
Such gratuitous, mean-spirited and overtly repressive prosecutions against non-violent dissenters have proliferated throughout the Bush era, in which ordinary citizens with moderate bumper stickers or t-shirts have been turned away from or arrested at public events.
The clear and present purpose is to spread a climate of totalitarian fear aimed at reversing the sacred American freedoms embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
The campaign runs in tandem with the attack on academic discourse coordinated by David Horowitz and other haters of open debate. In the guise of seeking “balance,” the rightist campaign aims to purge liberals from the liberal arts.
It parallels the industry-centered attempts to clamp down on the internet, which has been the sole grassroots source of reliable information and dissenting opinion in the US for years.
With total corporate domination of the major media, only the internet and a few talk radio shows and liberal magazines have kept alive the American tradition of a free press. Predictably, the administration is using a corporate front to shut off this last source of open “diablog.”
Bush has taken the same tack against science itself. As Joe Stalin exiled and killed researchers whose fact-based conclusions seemed to contradict the Party line, so the GOP attacks the overwhelming consensus among climatologists that global warming is real. With true Orwellian flare, the administration disappears official research (and researchers) whose data say the oil barons who define Team Bush must curb their emissions.
The repression has reached new theoretical levels. In recent weeks, right-wing journals such as the National Review have featured articles demanding enforcement of ancient legislation outlawing “sedition.” With the US now “at war,” the right-wingers say it is perfectly fine for Bush to arrest and imprison those who advocate peace. In particular they cite repressive legislation used in the 1950s to clamp down on “known Communists.” They also cite acts passed in 1917, during World War I, and the Sedition Act, passed under John Adams in 1797.
These laws in essence gave the Chief Executive power to imprison American citizens at will. Woodrow Wilson used them to jail Eugene V. Debs and thousands more who resisted US intervention in Europe. Debs was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for urging resistance to a war opposed by a significant majority of the American people (Debs ran for president from his Atlanta prison cell in 1920 and got nearly a million votes). Some dissenters were arrested for carrying posters that quoted Wilson’s own writings in favor of peace. Opponents of the military draft were routinely jailed without trial. A “Red Scare” was used as cover to smash the Socialist Party and radical labor movement, debilitating the American left for decades to come.
John Adams’s Sedition Act had similar aims. Its reign was brief and less destructive. But according to the New Totalitarians, it remains in force, and should be used to crush opponents of Bush’s Iraq attack.
The neo-cons have taken particular aim at generals and other officers who have criticized the Bush military strategy, if it can be called that. The critiques have merely underscored the astonishing incompetence of the Bush junta. They reflect the highest order of courage and patriotism.
But such honor and honesty comprise the New Totalitarianism’s worst nightmare. With indictments flowing deep into the kleptocracy, the most anti-democratic of all American regimes has just two tactics. The first is to create a culture of fear while silencing the dissenters, by all means necessary.
The second is to rig voting machines and strip voter rolls to guarantee that no matter how deep dissent actually carries in this country, it will have no tangible impact on who holds the reins of power. In tandem comes the deliberate shrinking of the electorate through repressive ID requirements and digitized voter registration lists. Thus far up to ten percent of the entire Ohio electorate—some 500,000 voters—have been stripped from the state’s registration rolls, all from Democratic strongholds.
Today Bush’s popularity has sunk to about a third of the population, a level similar to Hitler’s percent of the vote when the Nazis took power in 1933. The GOP neo-cons have clearly realized that they can only hold power with old-fashioned thuggery and high-tech Tammany.
Having lost the public debate on its suicidal military, economic, environmental and social policies, all-out repression and stolen elections are the two remaining pillars of the New Totalitarianism.
—
Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at http://www.freepress.org. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, upcoming from The New Press.
Originally published and copyrighted 2006 at The Free Press.
http://www.witnesstorture.org
i kicked quietgirls butt! toki! anyway uh yep i am gonna hit the road now since quietgirl disappeared from the yahoo:fire:
well im going away i wonder what happened to quietgirl? is she ok? did dwarves from the fifth dimension swoop down from outer space and kidnap her? only time will tell…………
http://wholphindvd.com/
http://www.begleysbest.com/
:banana:
Great show tonight
Goodnight :sheep::sheep:
patton oswalt is awesome! i will buy his dvd when i see it!
It’s past 5:00 am, right? Hmm.
PJ!:holla:
It’s cool. Whatever. I’ll just eat my casadia with no Thursday open thread:mad:
🙁 I remember the last time this happened.
It’s a vast right-wing conspiracy, man!:oops: Uh, I’ll just go chill-out and ponder this predicament- while makin’ another casadia:roll:
:omg:gah! the NSA got PJ!:paranoid:
This morning’s Cruella Watch will be posted sometime later today on the Thursday thread. Not really anything new, just a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the Repigs because they know they’re screwed and have no way of taking Bill Nelson’s Senate seat.
Just a lot of Schadenfreude. Which, of course, is why I wanted to share it here!
:banana::banana::banana:
SeanMS , finally sent postcard
:banana::billcat::banana:
ARREST!
IMPEACH! (format by KevinM)
VIGILANCE!
I’m goin’ to sleep. Bah!
Druid is alive!:omg:
whoa postcard!
oh on the off chance nobody knew buffalo is gonna win the stanley cup this year! fuck yes! kick ass! its about time! ha ha ha yes buffalo!
Oh, G’Day, G’Night All.:joe: 😀
ARREST!
IMPEACH! (format by KevinM)
VIGILANCE!
Kindergarteners like treats, man, not postcards:rofl2:
quick drive-by….got a doc appointment in hotlana this a.m….
PJ – you ok buddy?
I’m a jerk! now im gone :doh: Later people
:love:farmerkat
But my card has the tall Redwoods looming over…with several children around “their size” next to an adult looking very tiny. 😉
(lead balloon wit)
ARREST!
IMPEACH! (format by KevinM)
VIGILANCE!
CounterPunch Playlist
My Own Private, Springsteen-Free JazzFest (Week Two)
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
:omg: