Bread & Circuses (Panem et Circenses)

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 8

May 19^th- May 25^th, 2012

In the news this week:

The highlights:

• Funding the Third World: American dollars always take a detour
• NATO has a new Charter: Arming Afghan security forces draws protests
• Republican white supremacy, part 2: Right-wing minority birth rate panic
• Political non-proliferation: With 30 nuclear nations, only Iran matters
• Take me out to the ballgame: Orthodox Jews sellout Citi Field

• Funding the Third World:

It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone that there’s a Third World country somewhere on this planet with millions of people living in filthy slums, without running water, clean sewers, electricity, or access to schools for their children. It would be more shocking if we all woke up one day and found out these kinds of deplorable living conditions were wiped out through the compassion and welfare of all mankind. But that’s a dream world that doesn’t exist anywhere in this universe, and this is reality. The real question is not how this could happen. We all know the answer to that. It’s because human beings are a cold, ruthless species that has risen to the top of the food chain because of our greed, cruelty, and contempt for our fellow man, propelled by a belief in an almighty God to help justify our bloody deeds.

But how is it possible that this nightmare could exist in a country that receives the highest amount of foreign aid from the United States of America, second only to Israel? What exactly has Egypt done with the more than $2 billion a year we have given them since 1979?

We’ll never know the answer to that compelling question because we’ll never ask. We’ll never ask because we don’t give a shit what they do with it. In fact we don’t put strings or conditions, especially humanitarian ones, on any money we give to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, or anyone else. Except American citizens. We Americans have to specify in detail to our government, through the Internal Revenue Service, where our money goes and what we do with it, so they can determine just how much to steal back from us in order to pay for the handouts we give to our military allies like the Pakistanis, the Israelis, and the Egyptians who don’t live under such constraints. It’s a strange country we live in.

• NATO has a new Charter:

Mad scenes of hundreds of police officers, in riot gear and gas masks, fighting with thousands of protesters on the streets of Chicago flood the TV screen. Mounted police forcing their way through the crowds waiving night sticks while they fight back, as the pushing and shoving escalates into violent confrontations between citizens and law enforcement. Replays of the Chicago riots outside the Democratic Convention in 1968? No. This was the scene this week outside the headquarters of the latest NATO summit, the only time it’s ever been held outside Washington, D.C.. Among the protesters were disenchanted members of the National Guard who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were throwing their combat medals onto a pile in the street just like they were tossing draft cards onto the pyre 44 years earlier.

A movement that grew out of Occupy Wall Street has grown into a protest of NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan. Why an organization that was formed to standup against post-World War II Soviet aggression is even involved in a war in Afghanistan is a good question. The bigger question is why NATO still exists at all especially since the U.S.S.R. no longer does. The reason is because America thrives on being in a constant state of war, hot or Cold, and the Military Industrial Complex cannot survive in a vacuum.

The NATO summit held in Chicago has, as its honored guest, the fraudulently elected President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. He was there to spell out the rationale for giving him the $4 billion a year in aid he is asking for to help prop up his American backed regime. In a policy statement taken right from the official NATO website, they’re spinning it this way:

“NATO’s primary objective in Afghanistan is to enable the Afghan authorities to provide effective security across the country in order to ensure Afghanistan can never again be a safe haven for terrorists. To achieve this goal, the 50 nations that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conduct security operations and train and develop the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).”

That’s a far cry from NATO’s original purpose statement after their formation in 1949 which was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. Then again, maybe it isn’t all that different after all. Everything we do all over the globe is about keeping America in the thick of it.

The talking points memo goes on to claim that NATO forces are there at the request of the democratically elected government to provide security forces to protect Kabul and the surrounding areas. The first lie is using the word “democratically elected” since the election was a sham and everyone knows it. It only got an air of respectability because President Obama called President Karzai on the phone personally to congratulate him on his rigged victory. And when they say they want to protect Kabul, what they really mean is that they must, at all costs, protect the corrupt Kabul Bank. The biggest laugh line in the report is when they claim that NATO and Russia have “common objectives in stabilizing Afghanistan and the broader region”. This is the same Russia that invaded Afghanistan before we did, bombed them into oblivion for ten years, and then, when they refused to submit, went home leaving thousands of unexploded land-mines for the peasants and their children to dig up and detonate years and even decades later.

From here the official statement goes on with more propaganda about aims and goals for the betterment of the Afghan people. That’s the biggest lie of all. The only people NATO is worried about defending are the Afghan security forces, President Karzai and his Mafia, and the Drug Lords who don’t want to have to compete with the Taliban again. In all this bullshit coming out of NATO’s propaganda ministry, there isn’t a single word anywhere about bringing Afghan women into the 21^st century, building schools where girls can go for an education without getting stoned to death by their own families, or a plan to wean Afghanistan off their dependence on poppy production and into other forms of agriculture that doesn’t allow them to be the suppliers of the majority of the world’s heroin.

It’s a sure bet that you won’t hear a peep out of President Karzai or President Obama in any speeches coming out of Chicago this week about any of those things. This summit is about military escalation and nothing more. Modernizing the Afghan army and arming them with the latest training and technology is the only ambition of the United States. By dragging NATO along for the ride we also get an air of legitimacy we so desperately desire. Something has to justify our ten year commitment to a war we had no reason engaging in and cannot win.

When are ever going to learn to stop believing the lies our government tells us in the name of democracy and freedom. We don’t give a shit about Afghan school girls having a future any more than we care about where all the illicit drugs that floods our inner cities and low income neighborhoods come from. We are the world’s biggest arms merchants and that’s all we’ll ever be.

• Republican white supremacy, part 2:

A major shift is occurring in the population demographics of America and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are running scared. For the first time in our history minority births are outnumbering white births. The last time this happened was five hundred years ago when the original Americans, commonly known as American Indians (today we respectfully refer to them as Native Americans even though they are still ghettoized onto reservations), outnumbered white Europeans. Back then, our white predecessors looked at that situation and took what could only be called a proactive approach. Genocide wasn’t as politically incorrect as it is today.

Latino births lead the pack, and combined with Asian and African Americans, now total 50.4% according to the latest U.S. Census. In another 30 years minorities will dominate the population over whites in all age groups, not just newborns. That’s what has the far right–wing of the Republican Party so terrified. They’re going to have to come up with a plan that will work in today’s modern era. They won’t be able to get away with introducing Small Pox and Trails of Tears campaigns into minority communities this time around. That explains why their platform at the Convention in August will now include a statement of commitment to “the struggle for Aryan Racial survival and social justice for White working class people throughout our land”, two tenants taken right from the homepage of the American Nazi Party, with plans to squeeze in a speech by its Chairman, Rocky J. Suhayda, somewhere between Sarah Palin and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. If Newt Gingrich gets bumped, he’ll be very annoyed.

Pat Buchanan must be having night sweats. His biggest nightmare he’s been dealing with ever since his days on the debating team at Gonzaga is coming true. In fact, Republicans, in a desperate attempt to ward off this looming catastrophe, are for the first time reconsidering their tough stand on abortion. The thinking is maybe they should be softening their position, at least as it relates to minority procreation. They could package it as some kind of reverse affirmative action in the hopes that it will sound palatable enough to fool liberals into getting on board. Since liberals love abortion anyway they’re half way there already.

Otherwise the pending culture war that threatens to destroy the WASP Empire, you know, the one that draconian Fascists like Buchanan love to proselytize about, could be right around the corner. The last thing Republicans want is to live in a nation of color. Red, White, and blue are the only acceptable hues in their world.

• Political non-proliferation games:

A central issue in the world today and certainly in the coming elections here in the United States, is the issue of what we are going to do, collectively and on our own, to stop Iran from building more nuclear power plants. Right now they have one, and the End of Days is here. There are 30 countries in the world today with nuclear power:

Japan, South Korea, Canada, Ukraine, U.S.A., Sweden, Spain, Czech Republic, France, Russia, Switzerland, Finland, Hungary, India, the UK, Slovakia, Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Bulgaria, Mexico, Romania, Belgium, Pakistan, South Africa, Armenia, Iran, Netherlands, and Slovenia.

In addition, there are 18 countries heading towards development of nuclear power in the very near future:

Bangladesh, Belarus, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Malaysia, North Korea, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, and Vietnam.

Out of those 48 nations, only three have the good sense to head in the opposite direction. Germany and Switzerland are phasing out their nuclear power plant program, and Japan, in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown, has shut down all 50 of its plants. Unlike here in the U.S., in Japan their government actually listens to what the people want and demand of it.

If you want to bother calculating what this foolish endeavor has cost the global economy, just in dollars alone, it’s rather striking. A nuclear power plant averages around $2.4 billion to build, not including maintenance, upkeep, security, and of course, dismantling at the end of its 30 year life cycle. That means the 429 plants in operation today have drained the world economies of $1,029.6 billion. Corporate energy giants that build these massive facilities have found a way to stretch their investment dollars, by simply extending the life span of their nuclear power plants to more than 40 years. They’re risking the lives of millions of people as these death traps crumble and decay due to cutbacks in maintenance and ambitious attempts by upper management to ignore serious safety concerns to boost profits. Meanwhile they continue to remain online a decade or more after they should be retired from service.

And then there’s the dilemma of disposal of nuclear waste. In the 68 years since the development of nuclear power, the one thing the scientists and engineers have not been able to figure out is a way to safely dispose of spent fuel and trillions of gallons of contaminated coolant water. That’s because it is impossible. There is no way. That has not stopped mankind from advancing down this suicidal road anyway. In reality, it’s no different than any other garbage we generate. Nobody cares where you put it as long as we can’t see it or smell it. This is the ticking time bomb that is nuclear power.

As a strong opponent of nuclear power altogether, I must admit it is hypocritical of the entire world to single out Iran and say it is unacceptable for them to go in that direction, out of fear of them developing nuclear weapons with the spent uranium fuel rods, which is what everybody else does. But I think we’re approaching this wrong-headedly. All forms of nuclear energy, whether it be power plants or bombs, should be internationally banned, instead of wasting time arguing over who can have access to it and who cannot not.

If the rest of the world was looking at this objectively, they’d be united on a common front with a demand for a nuclear-free United States. After all, we are the only country on Earth who has actually dropped nuclear weapons on innocent people, and every President since Harry Truman has seriously weighed his options to unilaterally use them on more than one occasion if our national interests required it. President Nixon was eager to drop them on not only Vietnam (so, by the way, was Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater), but Cambodia and Laos, his own personal wars no one else seemed to even know about.

What’s most disturbing about this phony display of world unity in the name of salvation of the entire planet, is that there a currently 14 countries with nuclear weapons on their soil, and no way of guaranteeing that they cannot fall into the wrong hands. In fact, they already are in the wrong hands- politicians.

Russia leads the pack with over 10,000 nuclear warheads and a madman running the country, bent on returning Russia to its former glory under the Czar, back to the good old days when the Bourgeoisie and the peasants knew their place. Hundreds of weapons are still unaccounted for after the fall of the Soviet Union resulted in the looting of the arsenal and the treasury by the former Communists who simply changed clothes to remain in power disguised as Capitalists.

The U.S.A. has 8,500, but don’t feel too sorry for America falling into second place just yet. We get to warehouse nuclear weapons all over the globe, with 90 in Turkey, 40 in Italy, and 20 each in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Then there’s another 1,160 floating around out there with 300 in France (first test in 1960), 240 in China (first test in 1964), 225 in the UK (first test in 1952), 200 in Israel (that we know of since Israel refuses to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by acknowledging what we already know- that their arsenal is actually higher by over a hundred if not more), 100 in Pakistan (first test in 1998), 90 in India (first test in 1974), and trailing far behind, but probably the one nation more dangerous than Iran, is North Korea with 5 (first test in 2006).

So how come the world, led by the U.S., is focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear potential, and not Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, or North Korea’s nuclear reality? Because Iran is the flavor of the month for fear mongering, and this is an election year.

• Take me out to the ballgame:

Citi Field is the new home of the New York Mets. It is the resurrection of the old Shea Stadium in Flushing, N.Y.. It was built, in part, with a 20-year/$400 million sponsorship funded by Citigroup, paid for with billions they got in the TARP bank rescue. Millions lost their homes and their pensions in the 2008 economic meltdown, but at least it’s good to see that some of the government bailout money went to a good cause.

On Sunday, May 20^th, the stadium was filled to the rafters. But there was something rather odd about this crowd. First of all, they were all dressed in black, with white shirts, and every head was covered with either a large brimmed black hat or a black yarmulke. And second, the entire crowd was made up entirely of men. Your first thought at such a sight is, are there no female Mets fans left at all?

But they were not there to see a ballgame. In fact there was no talk of sports at all. They were all gathered there by a group of Rabbis, through massive social networking using emails, Facebook, and Twitter, to discuss the threat to their eternal souls via the Internet. Getting over 40,000 spectators into this stadium is a feat the Mets could not even match by half on a good day. Apparently a rumor had spread that an Orthodox Jew saw a naked woman that was not is wife on his computer screen and all Hell broke loose. Tickets sold out soon after they went on sale, thanks to an aggressive marketing tsunami that targeted Jews across the Metropolitan area warning of the sins and evils of the Internet. Naturally, no women were allowed in. Take away the obvious Hebrew garb and this could just as well have been a mass assembly in Tehran.

In case you’re wondering how such a spectacle could be put together and who would have the where-with-all to do it, forget about appealing to a deeper morality or a calling from God and just think pure capitalism. It turns out the organizers of this event were a rabbinical group called the Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachane with strong ties to a software company that sells- what else?- Internet filtering software to Orthodox Jews. They managed to get more than 40,000 Jews into a baseball stadium to make a sales pitch for a product that basically replaces their index finger on a delete button. While they had a captured audience, fliers were also handed out selling “kosher” Apps for smart phones. It was comforting for Jews everywhere to know that while there was a tool out there that could protect them from graphic sexual distractions they couldn’t turn away from on their own, the location of the closest delicatessen with the freshest whitefish was still just a keystroke away.

To ensure the maximum sales potential, the whole event was streamed live to homes and Synagogues throughout the New York area- on the Internet.

Gary Forte, reporting

May 25^th, 2012

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 7

May 12^th- May 18^th, 2012

In the news this week:

The highlights:

• JP Chase’s a dream: Jamie Dimon is a double-dipper but no one cares
• Nakba and the Arab Spring: Two days that will live in ignorance
• An IPO stampede: Fiddling with Facebook while the nation burns
• Karzai’s telethon: Climbing over Israel and Egypt up the handout ladder
• Republican white supremacy, part 1: Main plank of their platform

• JP Chase’s a dream:

September 8^th, 2008 was a decisive turning point in determining America’s destiny. It was instrumental in setting the stage to make sure how our country was going to be governed from then on. That was the day that a calculated decision was made by America’s Moneychangers (the ones Jesus warned us about) to allow Lehman Brothers to collapse so they could harness assurances from the U.S. Government that the rest of their Houses of ill-repute would not. The nation’s banks and brokerage houses wanted an iron-clad guarantee that they would forever be under the protective umbrella of the United States Treasury. In other words, they wanted it cut in stone that the official policy of the United States was that they were too big to fail. All they had to do was sacrifice one lamb to the Gods of Wall Street in exchange for mercy and salvation for themselves.

Four years later one of the biggest culprits of the raid on the Treasury, JP Morgan- Chase, as unbelievable as this may be, is still trading derivatives known as credit default swaps as if nothing ever happened. Now that they’re the biggest bank in the country, the sky’s the limit on what risks they can take at shareholders expense, especially since they have positive proof that the American taxpayers have deeper pockets than they do.

Their loss of $3 billion this week is considered a minor blip in the overall scheme of things, not putting a dent in their vast portfolio, but it represents what is still seriously wrong with this country, three years after President Obama called Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP, his favorite banker when he was running for president the first time. The President is still clinging to this insane notion that having scoundrels like this at the helm are not the problem, they’re the solution. We’ve learned nothing, changed nothing, and accomplished nothing since 2008, and no one is happier about that than the Republican Party.

Once the news broke that JP Morgan has continued to be involved in these risky trade deals that brought down the house the last time, the President had this to say:

“Although Jamie Dimon is one of the smartest bankers we got, the bank’s losses make a compelling case for reform on Wall Street”.

What? Has he forgotten that the compelling case for reform on Wall Street happened four years ago when he got the nation’s mandate to bring it on then? If this doesn’t prove once and for all that nothing will ever change in this country until we go through another Great Depression, I don’t know what will. Barack Obama is in bed with Dimon and all the rest of these Wall Street hoodlums because he needs their help to get re-elected. It’s that simple and claiming he’s still better than Mitt Romney doesn’t change that fact. He has to put on this phony charade now by talking about banking reform so he can spend another four years giving lip service to it. Winking and giving a thumbs-up behind his back with one hand and his palm up to take their checks with the other. This is pure bullshit that we are still talking about this now while the President is once again fighting tooth and nail for an election that he should have been able to phone in.

Reform is too mild a word for what we need now. We need bulldozers. We need to break up these banks. We need real leadership that is not dependant on Wall Street money. The only way to ever achieve that dream now is to let the whole damn thing crash to the ground and start all over. The only reason it didn’t happen the last time in 2008 was because President Bush, followed by President Obama, did what they were ordered to do- bailout the banks so they can remain as corrupt and powerful as ever.

This piece of legislative Swiss cheese known as the Volker Rule, which doesn’t even go into effect until this July, was supposed to prevent the banks from engaging in proprietary trading, such as buying mortgage backed securities, while allowing them to continue hedge fund betting at their prerogative. They’re the same thing. There’s no way to distinguish one from the other. With so many loopholes already built into this thing, you can forget about it changing banking behavior. Banks and insurance industry insiders own the House of Representatives and they write the legislation as they want it be written. Our politicians just sign off on whatever is put in front of them as long as the pay is good. Then they slap each other on the backs and brag to their constituents that things are happening.

JP Morgan got $25 billion in TARP money back in 2009 because they were too big to fail. Today JP Morgan-Chase is bigger than they ever were and it will take at least that and more to bail them out again. Anyone who has doubts that Barack Obama will have to go down that road if he is told to is crazy. Ironically, this fiasco is a gift for him. He can run on a platform of reforming Wall Street again while he takes even more of their money to look the other way. It better be enough to counter Mitt Romney who’s running on a platform that Barack Obama is targeting innocent banks for more of his socialist regulations. It’s all a phony game anyway. As soon as the election is over, no matter who sits in the Oval Office, the stock market will rebound and so will JP Morgan-Chase.

• Nakba and the Arab Spring:

December 17^th, 2010 should be remembered as a historic day in future world history, and a Tunisian market vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi should be honored as a hero in line with Gandhi and Dr. King. That is if this world survives long enough to have a history to write about. That was the day Bouazizi self-immolated in a public square and changed the world forever. His single act of defiance against Arab oppression and injustice towards their own people sparked the Arab Spring, which brought about the downfall of Egypt’s Mubarek, Lybia’s Kaddaffi, and demands for civil rights throughout the rest of the Arab world. While it has not democratized Arab nations, with thousands of Syrians still dying in the streets a year and a half later proving that, Arabs everywhere discovered they had something more valuable than oil. A voice.

While stories of cruel treatment, harsh living conditions, and illegal detentions without trial in Arab prisons make for good news fodder in the Western press, these events stir little interest in American news media when they occur in Israeli prisons. But they exist just the same. On December 17^th, 2011, the one year anniversary of Mohammed Bouaziz’s death that ignited the Arab uprising, another awakening occurred when Khader Adnan, a Palestinian detainee, went on a lone hunger strike to protest the horrible conditions and mistreatment he suffered in an Israeli prison. Less than six months later, there are now more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes demanding world attention to cruel Israeli treatment, with thousands more poised and ready to join should any one of them die. There’s too much pandering to the Israeli lobby, especially in an election year, for any American politician to even talk about this issue let alone get involved in changing it through world-wide exposure.

This movement of solidarity is gaining momentum as Palestinians begin observing Nakba Day (meaning “catastrophe”) on May 15^th, a day of great historical significance to them although it is doubtful if many Americans have ever even heard of it, let alone appreciate it’s importance. It marks the day back in 1948 when more than 700,000 Palestinians were thrown off their own land and out of their own country and hundreds of villages were plowed under to make room for the newly created State of Israel. I doubt if they’re teaching that in Hebrew School. They’re not even touching it in Public School. Both fertile grounds for more generations growing up in ignorance and bigotry for things they know nothing about.

• An IPO stampede:

The third largest IPO in U.S. history is being offered on Friday, when Facebook, FB on the NASDAQ exchange, goes public at $38 a share. The sale miraculously makes this social networking company a $104 billion dollar enterprise, on paper at least. It also represents everything that is great and everything that is wrong with America.

Great in the sense that anything is possible in America with entrepreneurial imagination. Wrong because it represents why this, like all empires, is heading for collapse. The fact that a company that is nothing but pure bullshit can raise billions from investors who want in on it, while we as a nation can’t feed the poor, care for the sick, and educate our children, shows just how decadent and narcissistic we really are. The once great manufacturing powerhouse that supplied the world’s needs is nothing but a pile of rust and garbage, and the only companies that can thrive in a depressed economy with no hope of coming back, are those that produce nothing, generate nothing, and improve the lives of no one. All they provide are distractions for all our idle time while the clock is ticking on our very survival as a nation.

Everyone seems to have all this free time on their hands to sit around trading pictures and gossip on Facebook, totally unaware, or unconcerned, about the world crumbling around them. The country is descending into despair and hopelessness, with an exploding poor class living below the poverty line, and all we have time to worry about is checking our updates and seeing who wants to be our friend.

Capitalists will surely claim that it is not Mark Zuckerberg’s responsibility to care one way or the other about the underprivileged in this country anymore than it is a welfare mother’s right to care about his vast wealth. Well, maybe, but if not then whose responsibility is it? And what is going to happen to the middle class as they plunge further into unemployment and debt while investments in trivial pursuits like Facebook come pouring in? The whole country is scrambling to get on that bandwagon, totally unaware that there’s a cliff just up ahead. As we all tumble over the edge, be sure and capture it on your Facebook page before it’s too late.

• Karzai’s telethon:

President Hamid Karzai is taking time off from the war effort to visit Chicago. He’s coming, qaraqul in hand, hoping to seal the deal for his demands that Afghanistan receive $4 billion+ a year in assistance to prop up his puppet government for at least ten years after the American withdrawal, planned for 2014. Add that to the $3 billion+ to Israel and $2 billion+ to Egypt we already cough over and you’re talking the same $10 billion a year we have spent for the last ten years on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

The Republicans are hell-bent on assuring that we maintain our commitment to these militaristic ventures, and with no sign from President Obama that he plans to divert from that course, they can all sleep well at night. With China already heavily invested in Afghanistan’s vast untapped mineral wealth, and with guaranteed protection provided by the American military and private mercenaries, paid for by the American taxpayers, all the Chinese engineers and contractors poised to pour into the country as soon as it is in total lockdown can rest assured of their safety. All that’s left now is for the U.S. to get on its hands and knees and pray that our bankers in Beijing agree to lend us the money to pay for it all.

• Republican white supremacy, part 1:

Scott Brown is attacking Elizabeth Warren by insinuating she’s not a full American. The irony is that her Native American background makes her more American than anyone running. He hasn’t decided whether to make this a campaign issue by exposing the dirty little secret that she is an Indian or accusing her of only claiming to be one. In the end it doesn’t really make any difference, does it? It’s still all about scaring people by bringing up racially charged images, and trying to separate real Americans from fake ones. Although this tactic of shouting “the Indians are coming” is rather bizarre, even for a loon like Brown. I suppose he’s betting on the hope that the citizens of Massachusetts are hoping the Cavalry is charging.

And just to show you how desperate the Tea Party is, they’re dredging up Reverend Jeremiah Wright once again. They’re hoping to re-ignite racial fears and tensions against a President who also has legitimate claims to have partial minority status. Unlike Mitt Romney who’s a Mormon which every one knows makes him as white as the driven Utah snow. I never understood the controversy over Reverend Wright anyway. Every negative thing he preached about America in that sermon was true so what’s the big deal? If you look at the way we treat our citizens, especially the elderly, the disabled, our children, and returning Veterans, we should all be shouting Goddamn America. If I believed in God, I would.

This election has come down to one polarizing issue- hatred. If you hate Mexicans, gays, school teachers, and Muslims, this is the year for you. If you trivialize Harvard degrees, green energy, and Hawaiians, you must be in political heaven.

Gary Forte, reporting

May 18^th, 2012

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 6

May 4^th- May 11^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Exiled in paradise: Ex-patriated Chinese speak out but no one’s listening
• American’s love nuclear power: The Japanese have good reason not to  
• Bankers deserve our sympathy: They’re just like the rest of us
• For the children: Abuse, neglect, slavery, starvation, and conscription
• Out of the closet: Obama gets a push and Biden takes a beating for it

 

• Exiled in paradise:

     The biggest problem for China’s Communist regime is having to deal with outspoken dissidents in their own country. As socially restricted as their society is, and as difficult as it may be to access the outside world, the Internet has opened up that world for the Chinese people, as much as their oppressive government has tried to subvert it. The thing the Chinese officials fear most is facing the consequences of allowing victims of their slave labor camps and vast prison system to capture the world’s attention through social networking and the international news media.

      Fortunately for the government, they have discovered a rather simple solution to this cultural dilemma of what to do with these brave but reckless critics eager to speak out, at great risk, just to have their stories told. The Chinese Communist leadership now sends them off to the one place where they can be assured that no one will be interested in what they have to say, and no one will care about the suffering and violence their counter-parts continue to face back home in China. They now give their dissidents one-way exit Visas to America.

     Shortly after they arrive here, and as soon as the bloom falls off the rose, they simply fade into oblivion, where their tales of horror generate about as much interest as yesterday’s news in a land where everyone is already scrambling for their own 15 minutes of fame as it is. These poor souls enter the U.S. with such high hopes of finally getting the opportunity to reveal to the world what they have witnessed and experienced, only to find out that no one really gives a damn.

     Part of acclimating into American society is accepting the fact that nobody cares what life was like in the Gulag, or the fact that government sanctioned infanticide is still rampant under China’s one-child policy. The other thing all Chinese exiles must face is that they can never go home again. Reality TV, live sports, and celebrity gossip are the only things Americans give a shit about. Any talk about challenging the Chinese Communist Dynasty is interpreted for exactly what it is. A potential threat to what we value the most in the U.S.: the price of X-Boxes and I-Pads, of course.

 

• American’s love nuclear power: 

     If it’s ethically and morally right to find some comfort in the aftermath of a monumental disaster, they are finding it in Tokyo, Japan. For the first time in over 42 years, the country is operating totally nuclear power-free. In a morbid yet strangely beneficial sense, this bit of good news is the direct result of the tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last year. Not only was the nation devastated, with hundreds of lives lost and billions in consequential damages, but the health threats to the entire world from the floating and airborne fallout may never be fully evaluated, though its effects will be just as devastating, none the less.

     Since that disaster, the last remaining of Japan’s 50 nuclear power plants, the Tomari power plant on Hokkaido, has been shut down for maintenance and safety issues this past week, and, like the fate of the other 49, it will not be re-opened. This is not in any stretch of the imagination due to conscientious efforts on the part of energy giants who own the facilities to put public safety ahead of profits. That kind of social responsibility doesn’t exist in capitalistic superpowers like the U.S. or Japan, any more than it does in China or the former Soviet Union. No, these plants have been shut down by something extraordinary, and something we desperately need more of in this country- public outrage. There’s one genuine character trait that the Japanese people seem to have in abundance and we are sorely lacking. That’s because we do things differently in the United States of America.

     Following an environmental disaster or national tragedy, we react by going in the opposite direction. We look at the causes, the conflicts, and the illegal aspects that led to the event and we want it even more. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, off-shore drilling was expanded instead of halted under a moratorium like it should have been. Following the Tucson massacre at the hands of a crazed gunman with a semi-automatic weapon with expanded load capacity magazines, gun law restrictions were eased instead of returning to the Bush-era assault weapons and extended magazine ban, even though it was the perfect opportunity to do so. When the unrestricted bank orgy caused the economic collapse of Wall Street, the banks wanted less regulation, not more. With a Goldman-Sachs bobble-head puppet in the White House, that wasn’t going to be a problem.

     In Japan, public reaction can demand the shutting down of an entire industry, regardless of the power and influence of corporate or political entities who profit from it. I wish we had that kind of freedom and self-determination. We Americans don’t have any where near that level of influence over our elected officials or our lives for that matter. And besides, the nuclear power industry is a powerful lobbying force in Washington, and we’ve had a pro-nuclear power advocate in the White House ever since President Harry Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. That’s when we fell in love with nuclear power, even if the Japanese still have reservations after all these years.

 

• Bankers deserve our sympathy:

      In the fourth quarter of 2008, a month before President Obama was even elected, the Treasury Department began what became the largest transfer of government money into private hands in history. Between October 2008 and December 2009 more than $200 billion of the $700 billion dollar TARP bailout was handed out to more than a hundred banks across the country. After the financial collapse on Wall Street in 2008-2009, one of the leading opponents of any kind of banking reform legislation that would potentially curtail the banks’ ability to get into that kind of mess again was the champion of bank CEO compensation, JP Morgan’s $50 million dollar man himself, Jamie Dimon.

     Pirates like him were never going to allow any significant banking laws and government interference get in the way of them raking in billions in profits however they saw fit. But with the financial world tumbling all around their ankles they knew it was going to take more than political payoffs and bribery to block the enormous public sentiment in favor of new regulations under the circumstances.

     On September 8^th, 2008, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers was about to cause an avalanche on Wall Street, Jamie Dimon was sitting on the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve. Seeing the writing on the wall, he wrote a check for $3 billion in bailout money on behalf of his company JP Morgan-Chase. Wall Street kingpins like Dimon knew that what they needed was continued insider access to the White House regardless of who was elected in November. Lucky for Mr. Dimon, he had a new friend on the inside after the election. As Barack Obama’s favorite banker and a huge contributor to his 2008 Presidential campaign, Jamie Dimon finally got what he always dreamed of, and the chances of Dodd-Frank ever having any teeth were substantially minimized.

     This week, four years after the banking free-for-all and all the arguing against any form of new regulation to reign in the banks and prevent them from taking the very same gambles they took that caused the depression, Jamie Dimon announced that his bank, JP Morgan Chase did, in fact continue business as usual as if nothing had happened the last time. Their loss of $2 billion sent shock waves throughout Wall Street and around the financial world.

     But things aren’t all bad. Last year Jamie Dimon made $23 million. The poor fellow had to take a pay cut that amounted to half of what he was making in 2007 before he helped drive his bank to the brink. But at least it shows he’s doing his part. After all, we’re all making half what we did in 2007, with many making nothing at all, so in reality, he’s just like one of us. In fact if you look closely, you’ll realize that the CEOs of all the nation’s biggest banks are just like you and me. Sacrificing for the good of the nation.

     While Wall Street was descending into chaos and a total meltdown was just around the corner, it’s fascinating to examine the 24 banks that each received over a billion dollars in TARP money that first year in 2008, and the salary and bonus compensation packages their CEOs received in 2007, before the collapse, and in 2008, smack in the middle of it:

TARP money allocation /Salary and bonus compensation

1. Citigroup- $27.3 billion /CEO Charles Prince- $26 million in 2007,

Vikram Pandit- $10 million in 2008

2. Wells Fargo- $25 billion /CEO John Stumpf- $12.6 million in 2007, $13.8 million in 2008

3. JP Morgan Chase- $25 billion /CEO Jamie Dimon $49 million in 2007, $19.7 million in 2008

4. Bank of America- $25 billion/Ken Lewis- $20.5 million in 2007, $9 million in 2008

5. Morgan Stanley- $10 billion/John Mack- $40 million in 2007, $1.2 million in 2008

6. Goldman Sachs- $10 billion/Lloyd Blankfein- $27.3 million in 2007, $53.9 in 2008

7. PNC $7.6 billion/James Rohr- $18.4 million in 2007, $14.6 million in 2008

8. U.S. Bancorp- $6.6 billion/Richard Davis- $4.4 million in 2007, $5 million in 2008

9. Sun Trust $4.9 billion/James Wells- $4.6 million in 2007, $8 million in 2008

10. Capital One- $3.6 billion/Richard Fairbanks- $37.4 million in 2007, $17 million in 2008

11. Regions $3.5 billion/C. Dowd Ritter- $5.7 million in 2007, $3.7 million in 2008

12. Hartford Financial- $3.4 billion/Ramani Ayer- $27 million in 2007, $9 million in 2008

13. Fifth Third Bank- $3.4 billion/Kevin Kabat- $6.2 million in 2007, $3.1 million in 2008

14. American Express- $3.4 billion/Kenneth Chenault- $50.1 million in 2007, $42.8 million in 2008

15. BB&T $3.2 billion/John Allison IV- $7.9 million in 2007, $7.5 million in 2008

16. Bank of New York Mellon- $3 billion/Robert Kelly- $20.5 million in 2007, $13.3 million in 2008

17. Key Corp $2.5 billion/Henry Meyer- $6.3 million in 2007, $4.8 million in 2008

18. Comerica- $2.3 billion/Ralph Babb Jr.- $6.3 million in 2007, $4.1 million in 2008

19. State Street- $2 billion/Ronald Logue- $28.5 million in 2007, $28.7 million in 2008

20. Marshall & Illsley- $1.7 billion/Dennis Kuester- $5.2 million in 2007, Mark Furlong- $24 million in 2008

21. Northern Trust $1.6 billion/ Frederick Waddell- $6 million in 2007, $7.9 million in 2008

22. Huntington Bancshares- $1.4 billion/Thomas Hoaglin- $2.2 million in 2007, $2.6 million in 2008

23. Zions Bancorporation- $1.4 billion/Harris H. Simmons- $1.6 million in 2007, $1.5 million in 2008

24. Discover- $1.2 billion/David Nelms- $8 million in 2007, $8.2 million in 2008

    

• For the children:

     You could get any proposition past the American people, no matter how ludicrous, by simply including the phrase “it’s for the children”. People will buy any bullshit cause if it promises to benefit children. Democrats are just as guilty of this pandering as Republicans are. The stark truth is children are nothing more than pawns in a cruel game of one-upsmanship between political parties who mainly pander to two segments of society. Those who vote and those who can contribute money. Children, unfortunately, can do neither.

     The last thing we really care about in this country are children. Not just here in America, but all the forgotten victims all over the world. America is the world’s biggest arms dealer. That means we are the biggest purveyors of weapons and artillery to every despot and dictator with cash. And even if they don’t have the cash, they just have to clarify that they will stand by us against any and all left wing causes and we’ll give them the stuff for free.

     The largest class of innocent victims of all the violence and barbarism in the world are the children. They’re the victims in other ways too, besides being caught in the crossfire. There are 5 million children working in forced labor camps and sweatshops worldwide. And there are currently 8.4 million child slaves in the world, with 2 million of them being enslaved as child prostitutes. There are 500,000 child soldiers around the world forced to carry weapons heavier than they are, and forced to kill and mutilate their unknown enemies before they even reach puberty. For instance, hundreds of victims of the reign of Charles Taylor, recently convicted in an International Tribunal for war crimes, testified how they had limbs chopped off by machete wielding child soldiers conscripted by Taylor.

    If any nation is going to be judged on a scale that effectively measures their level of social justice, it will be by how it values and protects its children. In America we don’t do either of those things. Instead of relying on television shows to evaluate how we treat children, take a long hard look at factual statistics and be prepared for a crude awakening:

     In America, 6 million children a year are abused. That’s actually higher than the official number because multiple abuses within families are being counted as one case, if you can believe that. I guess we can’t afford to waste the extra ink if we can avoid it.

     In the last ten years, 20,000 children have died at the hands of their abusers, usually family members, with 80% of them under 4 years old. That’s five children dying every day from abuse. One every ten seconds.  

                                           1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10..

     And if all this isn’t disturbing enough for average Americans who are totally desensitized by the violence all around them while living in the wealthiest nation on Earth, 50-60% of child deaths are from malnutrition. And get ready for the real shocker. These deaths are not even counted as death by abuse, so the real numbers are actually much higher.

     If the Republicans get there way, with the help of the rest of the complacent bystanders in our society, lost in the oblivion of their own gluttony and depraved indifference, it will be illegal to treat an undocumented immigrant child in a hospital, expose them to an education in an American public school classroom, or feed them a free meal at the taxpayers’ expense. But who can blame their motives. Maybe they’re the real patriots here. After all, why should we let all these children benefit from having lazy, free-loading parents anyway? Don’t we have enough barnacles on the hull of society already?

 

• Out of the closet:

     Two amazing events happened this week and one of them was not that President Obama came out of the closet. He’s a political animal just like the rest of them and nothing they do can ever be trusted as sincere. Anyway stating that he now believes gays should be allowed to marry wasn’t all that amazing, although the fact that it took this long was. What’s remarkable was that Joe Biden’s heartfelt remark on gay marriage, which was, by the way, sincere, sparked a firestorm of controversy that eventually led to the President having to take a stand he desperately wanted to avoid. The other incident that stands out was that after the Vice-President of the United States of America, in the year 2012, made national news by proclaiming that he supported justice and civil rights for all citizens, he then had to crawl on his hands and knees and apologize to the President for doing it.

     As polarizing as this issue became this week, with right and left-wing religious bigots speaking out against gay marriage and desperate Obama cheerleaders rallying for it, I approach this whole embarrassing fiasco that makes me feel ashamed to be an American, from a different angle. As much as I detest the acceptable level of religious hatred in this country, with Republicans and Democrats united on that front in some bizarre way, I am just as offended by the Obama supporters who want to award his bravado for courageously taking a stand that is otherwise indefensible not to, while justifying his hesitancy in having the nerve to speak of it at all. I think both are shameful displays of political salvation and cowardice at the same time.

     The President said, with a straight face, that he never came out in support of legalizing gay marriage because he believed civil unions was enough to satisfy them. My first reaction was, did he actually just say that? Is this an acceptable opinion of a black leader in America, standing in the shadow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Did he also support separate but equal schools in the 1950’s? There’s no difference, and his justification in this instance is just as disgraceful. What a condescending and patronizing attitude towards gays and lesbians. I suppose Rosa Parks should have been satisfied that she was even allowed to ride on the same bus with decent white folk.

     But the icing on the cake was when the President put on his best progressive face for his gay constituents on TV while hauling Joe Biden’s ass into the Oval Office for a royal caning as punishment for forcing his hand on something he did not want to have to do before the election. The truth is he should have come out in support of gay marriage and all civil rights and constitutional protections for the LGBT community on January 20^th, 2009.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

May 11^th, 2012

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 5

April 28^th- May 4^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• The Obama Bake Sale: Raising money to bailout the Clintons
• Hillary’s hot potato: A blind Chinese dissident causes a distraction
• WWII’s unspoken treason: Exposed by Charles Higham, 1931-2012

 

• The Obama Bake Sale:

     The Obama campaign has something in common with banks and Fortune 500 companies. They’re all flush with cash. The difference is banks and large corporations are hording their reserves, while the Obama re-election campaign is spending all theirs. And why not? The old saying, “there’s more where that came from”, has never been more prevalent than it is today in American politics. There never seems to be enough funding for any of the social programs that politicians promise to support when they’re running for office, but there sure seems to be plenty floating around to get them elected on those promises in the first place. This is not even a partisan issue. Both sides are just as guilty.

     The Obama campaign has found a new issue dear to their hearts and they’re now asking the wealthiest of the elite among Barack Obama’s vast donor list to contribute to this worthwhile cause. Oddly enough it doesn’t have anything to do with getting Barack Obama re-elected. Matthew Barzun, the Obama Campaign national finance chairman and Jane W. Stetson, the national finance chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee have been out on the solicitation circuit with hat in hand, begging big donors for the maximum donation allowed, $2,300, to help pay off the remaining $245,000 of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential run debt. They’ve even gone so far as to approach Bill Clinton for a political quid pro quo. He’s now hitting the Presidents campaign trail with all the enthusiasm he can muster in exchange for the DNC helping the Clintons retire their own campaign debt. Even the President’s new Super-PAC called Priorities USA Action is in on that action. I suppose the fact that the Clintons are worth more than $100 million is irrelevant when it comes to political fund-raising and campaign financing.

     And of course let’s not forget that thanks to Citizens United, politicians, even those phony hypocrites who pretend they are opposed to big nameless donations can now turn to the real players in the game, called Bundlers, who can solicit thousands of dollars from as many contributors and package it for whomever and for whatever they desire without ever having to reveal where it comes from. Whether it’s the Koch brothers behind the curtain pulling the strings for Mitt Romney or Goldman Sachs behind the curtain pulling the strings for President Obama, the corruption is the same. It’s all fruit from the same poisonous tree, and it’s all thrown into the same blender used to make the Kool-aid. Drink up, America.

 

• Hillary’s hot potato:

     The diplomatic fiasco in China this week confirms what we already know, as much as we’d like to pretend otherwise. We are now and forever going forward, beholden to doing China’s bidding, and we are unable to stand up to them on any issue, especially a civil rights one. That also goes for any attempt we make to show our disapproval of Chinese human rights violations which are bountiful.

     At the same time that Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer and activist, was hiding in the American Embassy seeking safe asylum, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff at the State Department were scrambling to avoid the political debacle that was unfolding just as she was to arrive in Beijing for a diplomatic conference. It’s one thing to give lip service to Chinese human rights abuses for international reporters, with nothing to back up our hollow rhetoric. It’s quite another to remain conspicuously silent over the fate of a victim of Chinese brutality who has taken refuge on U.S. soil inside China. The truth is the United States would much rather just see this whole thing go away. They‘ve managed to do just that in an agreement with the Chinese government that effectively removed Chen from the Embassy before he could bring any more embarrassment to the Obama administration than he already has.

      Facing coercion from the Clinton State Department to leave the American Embassy voluntarily, and pressure from the Chinese officials threatening to beat his wife to death if he didn’t, Chen Guangcheng found the otherwise difficult decision that much easier to swallow. The White House is working under the delusion that the Chinese are acting in good faith, as if there is such a thing. Not only is there no guarantee of safety for Chen or is family, there is no evidence that China has ever honored such an agreement if they give one. In fact, they have already made it quite clear that they will not abide by anything the Americans request of them on Chen’s behalf. They’re already demanding an apology from the U.S. Government for giving Chen asylum in the first place.

     If the statements from Chen concerning the threats of torture and death to his wife and family are true, we’ll never know. Not a single American State Department official had the nerve or the permission to question him on it, giving them plausible deniability in case the awful truth ever does fully come out.

     During Chen’s daring escape route to the Embassy, he injured his leg and had to be taken to a Beijing hospital outside the walls of the sovereignty of the American Embassy. Chinese officials ordered that all American personnel must leave the hospital, leaving Chen alone and terrified that he will either be taken out by force, or will be notified that his wife will be murdered if he doesn’t comply. Leaving him alone was a cowardly act and responsibility must fall squarely on the shoulders of the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

     Now that the potential firestorm of controversy has dissipated, and the Secretary and her entourage have packed up and gone home, the fate of Chen and all Chinese dissidents brave enough to speak out against their oppressive government is still as volatile an issue as ever. If there was a chance for the U.S. to make a significant statement of where we stand on Chinese human rights, it’s gone now. That ship has sailed. It’s fully laden with packed cargo containers bound for Bentonville, Arkansas.

     The idea that the U.S. will ever let human rights positioning get in the way of economic negotiations with the Chinese who are the primary financiers of our national debt is a joke. Mrs. Clinton confirmed this week that the official policy of the United States, which was started under her husband, President Bill Clinton, is that we will not allow human rights violations upon a single individual interfere with vital strategic trade dealings with China. In other words, the official policy of the Untied States when it comes to what we perceive as severe human rights violations and abuses falls under another President Clinton invention, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

 

• WWII’s unspoken treason:

     Charles Higham is dead at 81. Unless you’re a fan of salacious biographies of big Hollywood personalities like Howard Hughes or Lucille Ball, you may not even know who he is. But if you read what I believe are two of the most important books of the 20^th Century, “Trading With the Enemy: An Expose’ of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949”, and “American Swastika”, you will never look at World War II and our involvement in defeating Hitler the same way again.

     In fact, if you have the courage to accept the fact that your government had as much to do with aiding and abetting the scourge of the Nazis as it did in waging a war against it, you will be convinced, as I am, that no war was ever justified because the very forces in power who profit from it’s origins are the same ones who profit from it’s engagements.

     It’s always the same old story. Americans are sold a bill of goods so we’ll agree to be taxed to death to finance the wars, young Americans who have nothing to do with the conflicts between self-serving world leaders are compelled to give their lives for a cause that is never fully explained, and in the end, enemies become allies again so everyone can get back to business as usual.

     And for anyone foolish enough to believe that World War II was fought over atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust, let me set you straight on that fantasy. No one gave a damn about the Jews. Not President Roosevelt, the 77^th-79^th Congress, or the American military leadership. WWII was no more about saving Jews than the Civil War was about saving slaves. If Hitler wasn’t so maniacal and greedy, he would have been just another U.S. trading partner, and Holocaust victims would have been just more collateral damage. Actually, that’s all they are anyway, considering the anti-Semitic hatred that still exists in the world today.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

May 4^th, 2012

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 4

April 21^st- April 27^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Church in State: The day the President and an ex-con cracked the wall
• Abandoning the Kurds, again: The U.S. and Iraq see eye to eye on this one
• Obama’s about-face: Constitutionalists are horrified but liberals are elated
• De-fanged and de-clawed: Underfunded, understaffed, and under attack
• The choice is clear but backwards: The Obama/Romney quandary

 

• Church in State:

     Ever wonder how all this religious fanaticism between Fundamentalist Christians and the White House got started? Sure, religion has been undeniably linked to everything that has happened in our Government since 1776 when the Founding Fathers, all devout Christians themselves, put up that “Wall of separation” between Church and State. But there were plenty of doors in that wall, and they all had keys. Today our politicians just use pass codes.

     But when did we completely lose sight of that entire premise? We know Ronald Reagan personally knocked down the Berlin Wall all by himself but who knocked down this one? To understand and retrace the timeline you must start with a chance meeting between a Governor’s brother and an ex-con. The insidious relationship that developed on that day between a newly elected President named George W. Bush and a convicted felon and one of the architects of the Watergate scandal named Charles Colson eventually destroyed the very fabric of this nation as we know it. As news of Colson’s death at age 80 makes headlines this week, it’s important to read between the lines and realize how this man was responsible for the dramatic shift towards right-wing religious influence in the Republican Party, long after he was outcast from the Nixon White House and sent to prison.

     Richard Nixon was a political animal if there ever was one. Not just a mammal like the rest of them, but a cold-blooded snake. But if there was one person in the Nixon White House more cruel and vindictive than Nixon himself, it would be his Special Council, Charles Colson. Most people think E. Howard Hunt, the CIA assassin lurking within the shadows of the White House staff, was the President’s point-man on high-crimes and misdemeanors, but Hunt got his orders from Colson. Thinking up devious ways to slander, blackmail, and eliminate those unfortunate souls that made Nixon’s enemies list was a Colson specialty. It’s what Nixon loved most about him. If fact he was so proud of the dirty tricks Colson came up with, including the Watergate burglary that brought down his own presidency, that he praised them in his memoirs.

     Charles Colson cried two times in his entire life. The first was November 8^th, 1960 when Richard Nixon lost the Presidential election to John F. Kennedy. The second was when crawled out of the back door at the White House in 1972 knowing he was about to fall on his sword for his President. After spending an entire law career and 4 years in the White House destroying lives and reputations, he was convicted of obstruction of justice for his tampering in the case against Daniel Ellsberg, including breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. He got a pass for plotting to assassinate Ellsberg although his President greatly appreciated the effort. Daniel Ellsberg and Jack Anderson were at the top of Nixon’s hit-list.

     For his part in attempting to crucify Daniel Ellsberg for exposing the Government’s lies in the Vietnam War, Charles Colson was sentenced to seven months in a Federal Country Club built specifically for the villains and scoundrels in the Nixon administration. He was devastated by his own downfall until he found Jesus in the next bunk and he was miraculously born again. He exited the Big House after serving time for crimes that should have put him away for 50 years, and walked towards the light. He went in a broken man, but came out with a vision from God motivating him to start his own Christian ministry and becoming an even bigger con-man than Oral Roberts, Pat Robinson, or even Billy Graham. Spending 7 months being consoled by his cellmate, Jesus, he found his new calling- to be one of those phony hustlers we call Evangelical preachers.

     In 1976, the same year another preacher was elected to the White House, Colson started The Prison Fellowship Ministries. In 1983 he expanded it to The Justice Fellowship. Turns out you can make a ton of money in the evangelical game as long as you put “Fellowship” in your title. Soon after that he was awarded $1 million from some bullshit entity called the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, whatever the hell that is, and he donated the money to charity. His own.  

      Preacherman Colson had a dream. At the time there was a historical rivalry between Christians and Catholics. As long as they spent all their time and energy bickering among themselves they could never be a united front, let alone be a political lobbying powerhouse that Colson envisioned they could be. So he devoted himself to that mission of creating a coalition of these two diverse religious communities with a common belief system, and managed to achieve something that had never been done before. He put a crack in the wall of separation of Church and State by bringing religious doctrine and politics to the same table.          

     Now everyone knows that convicted felons lose their license to practice law as well as their right to vote. Florida Governor Jeb Bush felt sorry for this ex-con turned con-man who became his close personal friend, and made an exception to the rule, restoring both to Charles Colson. This was right around the early part of 2000 when he introduced him to his brother, George W. Bush, who was running for President at the time. This was the handshake heard ‘round the world.

     Immediately after the election that Governor Bush helped rig in his brother’s favor, the first thing on the new President’s agenda, besides attacking Iraq, was to launch what he called his faith-based initiatives, an innocent sounding way of saying there will no longer be a wall of separation of Church and State in the government. He got the idea from Charles Colson who now had a revolving door into the White House and direct access to the President’s ear.

     One of George Bush’s last acts as President in 2008 was to award Charles Colson- the man who brought down a presidency, admittedly planted evidence to slander and falsely implicate innocent people, and was more than willing to send people he hated to prison or have them killed- the Presidential Citizens Medal.

     Today religion is in every aspect of political discussion. Our members of Congress are all consumed by legislative matters bound by religious doctrine and their consequences to law. We are now headed towards having a nation, once relatively free from such doctrine, that wants to bring back prayer in school, ban contraception, criminalize abortion, create a religious litmus test for elected officials, and openly discriminate and denigrate non-believers and members of other faiths, especially Muslims. President Obama has spent more energy in his first term proving what a good Christian he is than proving what a good progressive he promised he would be.

     We have always been fighting this battle. The wolves have always been howling at the gates. But we have always had the convictions to keep them at bay. That is no longer true. We have opened the floodgates and let those demons in the day that President George W. Bush met Charles W. Colson.

 

• Abandoning the Kurds, again:

     The idea of supporting struggling people fighting for independence from oppressive dictatorships is a fundamental American principle. At least that’s what we tell everyone. The truth is that’s a bunch of bullshit. We have never done that in over 200 years since our own war for independence. One of the many opportunities we had to prove this wrong was during the war in Kuwait.

     President George H.W. Bush, the other war-mongering President from the Bush Dynasty (it’s hard to keep track) invaded Kuwait to save them from the invading Iraqi army. By them of course I mean the Kuwaiti oil fields, not the Kuwaiti people. When the American Army was marching towards Baghdad, there was renewed hope for the most discriminated and oppressed people in Iraq, the Kurds. The Kurdish people were systematically violated, tortured, and murdered under Saddam Hussein. They found the strength and confidence to rise up and rebel at great personal risk when it appeared that the United States might at last stand with them in their struggle for freedom and democracy we spend so much time talking about every time we start wars. Stopping just short of taking Baghdad and removing Hussein, President Bush, believing his job as defender of the oil was a complete success, abandoned that mission, and with it all hope for the Kurdish people. He did promise to back them if they rose up against Saddam themselves, and they were foolish enough to believe it. Once we left, they were massacred by Saddam Hussein, using chemical weapons he got from the United States, the world’s largest arms dealers. It’s the same as drug dealers only legal.

     This brings us to current day and the fate of the Kurds in real time. They are being persecuted as much under the new Iraqi dictator and American puppet, President Talabani, as they ever were under Saddam. The Kurds are an independent Arab State, with their own governing body, security forces, and foreign dignitaries. They also have what the new Iraqi government and the Americans want most- control of the northern oil reserves. In a drive towards a realization of their independence from Baghdad’s central government, they have negotiated their own contracts with Exxon-Mobil and a pipeline treaty with neighboring Turkey. This act of defiance has angered President’s Talabani and Obama both. The truth is, a free independent Kurdistan is not in either of our interests and we have no intention of moving in that direction, let alone letting that ever materialize. This is why the United States is officially taking a backseat to the continuing destruction of the Kurds that began under Saddam. They are being bombed and executed into oblivion, and with a brand new fleet of the latest American F-16 fighter jets at Talabani’s disposal, the Iraqi ruling government may just succeed this time.

     So much for America standing up for freedom and democracy. Anyone who actually believed the war in Iraq was about Iraq democracy is a fool. But then President Obama is counting on milking that military victory in the name of it, right into a second term, so now who’s the fool?

 

• Obama’s about face:

     President Kennedy said we were a nation that could put a man on the moon. Today President Obama can’t even put a man on a bench. It’s not all his fault though. Republicans made up their minds the day he was elected that they’re going to block every initiative Obama had for the next four years. About the only thing you can blame on Barack Obama is that he’s black. If only he’d chosen to be Caucasian he wouldn’t be in this mess he’s in today. 

     The sale of Adult Depends tripled in the last three years. That’s because so many Republicans have been peeing all over themselves at the notion that they lost the White House. Nobody’s quite sure whether they were more devastated over the fact that he was a liberal or just because he was a black man. I think it’s a little bit of both. Anyway, the line was so long at the Congressional men’s room, most of them just gave up waiting and started doing their business right there in the Chamber. Their only hope now is to defeat Obama in November, otherwise the Congressional laundry budget will be higher than the Department of Defense. But there’s a lot more riding on this election than just that. The Republican’s greatest fear now is that if Obama wins a second term, the Suicide Hotlines will be overwhelmed by frantic calls from despondent Tea Party members. Knowing they won’t have any trouble getting access to guns, this could become a real problem.   

     It seems that both political parties are operating on a new philosophy for themselves. President Obama and the Democrats are switching gears and riding on a concept of “better late than never”, while the Republicans are putting all their money on Mitt Romney under the theory of “better than nothing”. What the President is doing may finally get things done, although technically he’s walking a razor thin line of unconstitutionality, and nobody knows that better than him. The Republicans are so completely void of ideas that they’re desperately counting on racism, class warfare, and just enough threats to the President’s life to get them over the top in the Electoral College. With Mitt Romney that’s all they’ve got and nobody knows that better than him.

     Whenever politicians get into trouble, they usually like to claim they found religion. It comes in different forms, but basically it’s the same principle. They hit bottom, see the light, and redeem themselves. The more deviant the offense, the closer to God they become. Sometimes, as in the case of Newt Gingrich, they switch religions altogether. He looked at the other guy’s God and figured his chances of redemption were better with that one. Nobody had the heart to tell him it was the same God, just in a weirder hat.

     Sometime last fall, President Obama looked into the abyss and didn’t like what was looking back at him. His legacy. So he found his salvation in a different kind of religion. The religion of political survival and commitment to do whatever it takes to accomplish what your ethics and principles prevented you from doing in the first place. The last thing he wanted was to wind up in some future Presidential lost and found box, along with Millard Fillmore, Jimmy Carter, and a pair of broken sunglasses left behind by some tourist. (Ironically, Jimmy Carter will go down in history as one of the most effective and visionary Presidents, depending on who’s writing the history books, of course).

     Obama announced a dramatic shift in policy, a turn that goes against his own words when he was running against the tactics of the Bush administration. Many in his White House staff as well as Democrats in Congress were dismayed by the reversal. Some thought it was a bad idea. Some even felt it was unconstitutional. But one thing they all agreed on. It’s absolutely necessary, not only if they’re going to win in November, but to prevent the worst possible outcome of any President’s second term. To be more ineffectual than his first.

     President Obama is fighting back, and not a moment too soon. Progressives are turning blue from holding their breaths for so long. That’s taking the concept of “blue state” a little too far. Not only is he using signing statements, executive orders, reconciliation, and special appointments when Congress is in recess, but he’s doing something even more bold. He’s daring the Republicans to challenge him on it, knowing full well that if they do they will be exposed as a bunch of lying bastards by revealing how obstructionist they really are. For once, President Obama is flashing the high beams in their faces and now they’re afraid to blink. Hopefully the deer pull out of their trance before it’s too late. There’s nothing more disturbing than having a Republican sprawled on the hood of your car.

     This is not something innovative or new. Every President who has faced a Congressional brick wall has reverted to these tactics to get things done. Reagan and both Bushes relied heavily on it, although Bush II took it to such extremes that his level amounted to treason. Funny how Republicans only screamed their heads off when Clinton and Obama used it. But instead of backing down, as has been his standard operating procedure for the last three years, it looks like President Obama may be surging forward. Republicans are suddenly finding themselves frozen in time with their mouths wide open. It appears like they’re about to scream, but for the time being nothing’s coming out. President Obama is gambling that they will not call his bluff this time. Since we all know that bullies are just over-compensating cowards anyway, there’s a good chance he could get away with it for once. Sometimes “better late than never” is all there is.

 

•  De-fanged and de-clawed:

     It’s become painfully obvious that we are at war. Class, cultural, religious, Coke vs. Pepsi. There is a deliberate ongoing assault perpetrated by Republicans and driven by Tea Party legions on many fronts, including the battle against secularism, the poor, women, unions, and the environment. The attack by religious fanatics attempting to institutionalize religion back into government and public schools is gaining ground every day, ever since George Bush’s faith-based initiatives took hold in the White House. That was one of his first acts of treason, not counting his actual stealing of the election in the first place.

     The cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and child services is driving millions of Americans, especially children, further into poverty. Women are being delegated back into second class status with threats to their freedom of choice, access to healthcare and reproductive options, and vital resources they need to take care of their families, many of which are without Fathers. The push to privatize the country, which has been accelerating every time a union is busted, began with Ronald Reagan, a man who spent most of his working life in unions before entering politics. But the one crucial area that is being besieged on a daily basis and is too often overlooked because of the inflammatory nature of the other attacks is the environment.

    Our water, the air, and the very foundation of the continent is threatened by gutting and decapitating of the Environmental Protection Agency. No where is that more evident than in the Southwest United States where oil pipelines and hydraulic fracturing are most profoundly used. Not only are the country’s largest fresh water aquifers being poisoned by chemicals and methane gas being introduced underground with the use of fracking, but the intense intrusive nature of the procedure is causing earthquakes and sinkholes that will cause major damage and disruption we can’t even calculate.

    Thanks to George W. Bush and the Republicans, the EPA has been drastically de-funded to the point where it doesn’t matter how progressive a sitting President wants to pretend to be. Even a Republican Party minority can sufficiently block appropriations to whatever program they don’t like. And that’s exactly how they have been operating since Obama took office. The Democrats can pass all the well-intended legislation they want, but without adequate funding for the proper staff and resources necessary to support the EPA’s ability to operate, they’re powers to enforce the laws are ripped to shreds. The head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson is essentially a paper tiger and the agency has been de-fanged and de-clawed.

     The Republican Party with powerful oil and gas industry backing is most concerned with the EPA Region 6 including oil-rich Texas and Oklahoma, and its administrator, Al Armendariz. The fossil fuel companies are determined to go ahead with all forms of extraction, whether it be off-shore drilling, fracking, or dangerous pipelines, and they, along with their right-wing friends in Washington, plan to fight President Obama’s wind and solar initiatives with all their power and unlimited lobbying efforts. As they battle back and forth over ideology, we all know the real driving force at work here. Oil and gas makes billions of dollars. Wind and sunlight is free into eternity.

     Here’s what the right-wing propagandists are using to describe the Obama administration’s plan of attack against violators of the law:

     “It’s kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you’d know that town was going to be real easy to manage for the next few years”.

     Sounds like a pretty outrageous way to make a point. Can you imagine the nerve of these people comparing the EPA trying to enforce environmental protection laws with the brutality of the Roman Emperor? Except there’s one thing wrong here. The Republicans didn’t make this up, as hyperbolic as it sounds. This is a quote from Mr. Armendariz himself. Don’t we have enough up-hill battles with anti-environmental right-wing kooks out there without giving them ammunition like this?

   

• The choice is clear but backwards:

     In case you’re having a difficult time wading through the muck of political promises and slogans, this should clarify things a bit. If you want a President who promises to:

*Maintain strong ties to Wall Street

*Deport more illegal aliens than any other President

*Expand gun rights for Americans

*Extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich

*Continue the illegal eavesdropping policy of George W. Bush

*Kill more innocent civilians in drone attacks than Bush ever did

*Stand against Gay marriage

*Support off-shore drilling and nuclear power

*Limit free speech and crack down on whistle-blowers

     Then you should vote for a candidate who has done all of these things: Barack Obama.

     On the other hand, if you want a President who promises to:

*Create the most innovative universal health care system the country’s ever seen

*Make a commitment to be the best friend gays and lesbians ever had in office

*Preserve and enforce pro-choice laws

*Close tax loopholes

*Denounce Ronald Reagan’s policies

*Defend global warming

*Promote a pathway to citizenship for illegals

*Support an assault rifle ban and the Brady Gun Control law

*Endorse stem-cell research

*Refuse to sign a no-tax pledge

*Favor campaign finance reform including caps on spending for candidates

     Then you should vote for a candidate who has done all of these things: Mitt Romney.

     Now here’s the quandary for both parties. The Republicans are praying that Romney will stay true to the only promise that counts. The one that guarantees he will disregard his entire record in public office and stand in reversal of every stand he as taken once he gets the nomination.

     The Democrats are praying that Obama will ignore all the promises he broke in his first term and return to the Progressive principles he ran on the first time, once he is re-elected.

     The quandary for average voters is far less complicated. Politicians are all full of shit.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

April 27^th, 2012

 

 

 

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 3

April 14^th- April 20^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Wiping out Panama’s last indigenous tribe: Not by sword, but by water
• American democracy is a fraud: 47 electoral delegates will decide
• The voyage of the U.S.S. Titanic: Iceberg ahead and not enough lifeboats
• What would Reagan do?: Democrats just love to quote him
• PAH and tarballs, 2 years later: BP pays a small fine for ruining the Gulf
• The “Blame Bush” game: Obama wants to play, 3 ½ years too late
• Mitt Romney is constituency intolerant: He has a problem with…everyone

 

• Wiping out Panama’s last indigenous tribe:

     Tectonic plates beneath North and South America began shifting and rising about 20 million years ago. For the next 17 million years, a natural land bridge began to form at the bottom of what is now Central America, creating what eventually became the Isthmus of Panama. For the past 3 million years, this tiny land mass has evolved into one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. There are thousands of exotic plants, animals, and bird species in the jungles and rainforests of Panama, some of which exist nowhere else on Earth. This is also the last refuge of the Ngabe tribes. Like the original inhabitants thousands of years before them, they will soon fall victim to the same fate all indigenous Indian populations in the “New World” have suffered for half a millennium.

      From the time the Spanish arrived in the bloody footsteps of Christopher Columbus, they’ve been laying claim to a new world that had already been inhabited for centuries by the Cuevas and Colces’ tribes of Central America. They were all massacred by Spanish conquistadors who came lusting for gold. The last remaining remnants of that civilization are the Ngabe.

     The Isthmus of Panama has been fighting for its independence ever since. After 300 years of Spanish rule, it became the focal point in clashes between Scotland, England, and France. It also became a haven for looting and plundering pirates and escaped African slaves who were brought there to work the plantations after all the local Indians were slaughtered.

     By the end of the 19^th century, Panama was ruled by neighboring Columbia. There were many attempts to break free including a war for independence that lasted from 1899 to 1902. Out-manned and over matched they were destined to lose that battle as well, until an unlikely alliance was formed. President Teddy Roosevelt came charging up the hill carrying a very big stick and agreed to join in on Panama’s side to help them gain their freedom. With one small caveat. All we asked for in return was a total sovereign claim over a tiny spit of land 10 miles wide and 50 miles long separating the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, soon to be known as the Canal Zone.

     A deep-water route across the isthmus was a dream of foreign conquerors ever since 1534 when it was first conceptualized by King Charles V of Spain. He wanted an easier route to the Pacific that would give him a clear advantage over his biggest rival, the Portuguese. He envisioned creating a shipping lane through Panama that would save thousands of miles of sea travel around Cape Horn. His only problem was there wasn’t enough shovels in all of Europe at the time.

     When the French controlled Panama in the mid-19^th century they planned to follow through on that dream and began construction of a canal in 1880. They toiled for the next 20 years, spending millions of francs, and employing hundreds of slave volunteers and all they got was stuck in the mud. In 1902 President Roosevelt saved their “anes francais” by paying the French $40 million to simply walk away and leave all their equipment right where it lay. The next time we came to the rescue of France was when President Eisenhower bailed them out of their quagmire in Vietnam with a $2 billion dollar rescue package.

     The U.S. insisted that the Panamanian Ambassador first agree to sign the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty giving the United States total dominion over this stretch of jungle into perpetuity. The Army Corps of Engineers began work on the Panama Canal in 1904, making it the largest construction project in the world at that time. The Panama Canal celebrated their Grand Opening on August 15^th, 1914. Of course since the Ambassador did not have the authority or permission to sign such a treaty, the Panamanian government spent the next 77 years disputing its validity. President Carter gave the Canal Zone back to them in 1979.

     Today another massive undertaking is going on again in Central America. The world’s most ambitious hydro-electric dam projects, the largest called Barro Blanco, are currently underway in Panama. They’re being widely promoted by the government and backed by a consortium of Panama’s wealthiest families. The massive construction site had one minor obstacle in its way, although nothing great earth movers couldn’t handle. Right in the middle of it all is the last remaining homelands for the Ngabe people.

     Under agreements with the new government, concessions were made to the Ngabe that included returning to them a small portion of their sacred lands that were originally theirs to begin with. Not because of any great humanitarian motives, you understand, but because it was politically expedient since it was a section of the rain forest that nobody wanted or cared about. Now that the area has been found to be rich in vast mineral deposits as well as having a tremendous potential for making millions by producing electricity with the building of these new dams, the government is going back on its word and retaking the land back from the Indians, again.

     Large protests have been mounting which provides the government with perfect cover to justify their crackdowns on these trouble makers who are drawing way too much attention in the world press. What is not widely reported is the brutality the government is using against them, with intimidation, arrests, beatings, and rapes of hundreds of demonstrators.

     As ancient rivers and streams are being dammed up for the new power plants, centuries old Ngabe villages are being swallowed up in the deluge. In some places, you can still make out the thatched hut rooftops breaking through the surface. The corrupt government of Panama is pushing for support of these projects claiming it will be good for the economy. Unfortunately it’s not good for the Ngabe people who have nowhere else to go. Their language, their culture, and their very existence will probably be wiped out within the next five years if this destruction is allowed to continue in the name of progress.

     The interesting fact is that the amount of dams and hydro-electric plants under construction will produce far more electricity than the growing population of the country could possibly ever use or need. What the people are not being told, especially the native Indians who lived off these lands that are now being consumed by this man-made flooding, is that they plan to sell off the excess energy that will be produced to neighboring countries at huge profits for the investors. Of course the indigenous people that are seeing their culture being systematically wiped out will not see a penny of that windfall.

 

• American democracy is a fraud:

     For those of you who are eligible voters in the 37 states that are already earmarked to go red or blue, the election is over. Your votes don’t matter because it’s the electoral delegates that decide, not you. In some highly populated states like Texas and California the actual vote tally comes down to 38 and 55 delegates. In small states like Delaware and Montana it boils down to just 3. Meanwhile the true fate of the election lies in the fickle hands of the 161 delegates in 13 so-called swing states. But who are we really kidding here? We all know what’s happening. This election and all “elections” from now on (we need to keep calling them that so we can pretend we still have a democracy) will be decided in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. All the Republicans have to do now is outspend and out-slander the Democrats in Pennsylvania and steal Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004). What the Democrats need to do now is to run a novelty candidate with a dream so they can win Pennsylvania and either Florida or Ohio. That may have worked for them in 2008 but that honeymoon’s over.

     We can fix this problem very easily but it will take guts and leadership from Congress, two qualities that are surely lacking in that institution. It’s too bad because if Congress had either of those things, we could just get rid of the Electoral College system altogether. There isn’t a politician on either side who could defend this bullshit, and there isn’t a person in America who could honestly say it works. And yet, there isn’t a single voice in Congress or the White House advocating its abolishment. Why not? Because politicians are selfish lying hypocrites and they only do what’s in their interests, not the American people’s. As long as they still hold onto the belief that it helps them win elections, they’re perfectly willing to keep the status quo.

     If the current status of the delegate count stands on Election Day, with the Democrats carrying 196 and the Republicans 181, that’s a 51%/49% split, and that doesn’t even take into account the 94 left (not counting OH, PA, and FL). So, here’s the scenario as I see it. The Democrats could take Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico. That’s an additional 20 giving them a total of 216. The Republicans will certainly take New Hampshire, Virginia, and North Carolina. That’s an additional 32 giving them a total of 213. Thanks to Scott Walker and his all out assault on unions, Wisconsin’s 10 delegates are a gift for the Democrats. That’s 226. And Michigan will surely pay back Obama for bailing out the auto industry with their 16. Now they’re up to 242. Iowa will take a Mormon over a Muslim any day so their 6 goes to Romney, giving the Republicans 219. That leaves Missouri. The “show me” state viewed the options in 2008 with a chance to swing to the Democrats, but they didn’t like what they saw and went for McCain. The Democrats will have to show them a good enough reason why they should even consider switching to them this time around, and I don’t think they have one. Their 10 goes to the Republicans. They’re now at 229.

     And here we go again. To win the Presidency a candidate needs 270 delegates. The fact that we live in a country with 313 million people is apparently irrelevant. The Democrats are at 242. If they win Pennsylvania’s 20, and that’s a big if right there, that brings them to 262. Then they only need either Ohio’s 18 or Florida’s 29 to put them over the top. That puts the Republicans in the tough but not impossible position of having to win both. If, however, the Republicans win Pennsylvania’s 20, they’ll have 249, but they’ll still need to win both Ohio’s 18 and Florida’s 29 to put them over the top. In the end it still all comes down to those 47 delegates deciding the entire election and it will remain this way as long as we rely on this dumb antiquated system.

    There are any number of variables here that can change the odds one way or the other and alter the outcome. There is still a chance for a designated red state to go blue. It happened in 2008, which is the only reason Obama beat McCain in the first place. But that is very unlikely to happen again. On the other hand, there is a very real possibility that a blue Democratic state could vote Republican this time. The odds lean more in that direction than the other way around.

     If Indiana, Montana, either of the Dakotas, Colorado or any one of those swing states that went blue last time, gets embarrassed and turns red, it’s all over.

 

• The voyage of the U.S.S. Titanic:

     In honor of the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, it’s interesting to note that the United States is a lot like the Titanic. We are the epitome of gluttony, overwhelmingly superior to anything ever built yet vulnerable just under the surface, divided into two classes separated by great wealth on the upper decks with little compassion for those down below, and heading for disaster because there’s nobody in the wheelhouse watching for icebergs.

     This election is more split on ideology than at any other time in history. Both political parties are buried in greed and corruption and neither one will do what’s right or necessary to unlock the gates in the lower decks and let the poorer classes out before the berg strikes. Everybody in politics today, in both parties, is only looking out for themselves and their futures. There’s a real sense that tragedy is about to befall us and those in power know full well that there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. So all we’re going to hear for the next 8 months is pandering bullshit from both sides on who’s better equipped to steer the ship.  President Obama claims he can turn it around if only he had a second chance, and Mitt Romney is claiming he can save us all if we just return to the course we were on under the Bush administration. They’re just rearranging deck chairs while the Congressional dance band plays on.

     Each candidate throws out his own clichés and catch phrases, but they share one objective. All they care about is how to milk rich donors for huge cash contributions, and doing whatever it takes to get elected or re-elected. I’m not even sure what’s worse any more. A Republican who lies about their phony stand on a social or political issue that they’ll never actually support, or a Democrat who lies about their phony support of a social or political issue that they’ll never actually take a stand on. Democrats have to fool moderates and independents by pretending they’re on the right of political issues, and Republicans have to fool moderates and independents by pretending their on the left of social issues. We just listen and try to decide whose lies are more appealing, which makes fools out of us all.

     It’s really aggravating when Republicans habitually steal progressive ideals from the Democrats and pretend it was their idea all along. But at least they have to put some effort into the theft. When Democrats hand them one of their core issues on a silver platter, it makes it so much easier for Republicans to get away with it, so who can blame them? This week they received a gift even people as devious as Republicans couldn’t conceive of on their own. They got to take a stand on the defense of working stay-at-home moms, wiping away, at least for this week, decades of evidence that Republicans never gave a shit about women, especially working stay-at-home moms.

     When Hillary Rosen, the CNN reporter, said that Ann Romney has no concept or connection with the needs and concerns of women because she never worked a day in her life, she was absolutely right. She is, after all, one of the richest women in America. Unfortunately her choice of words left the dangling impression that women who don’t earn a salary outside the home don’t work. The Democrats fumbled that ball, and the one group who could really be accused of not having any compassion for women ran with it. It suddenly became their shining moment to show how compassionate they really were. The whole circus has been a useless distraction, but it makes for good sound bytes on television, and that’s all that really matters.

     The Democrats were caught in a trap. They couldn’t define what she really meant by her misunderstood comment. They couldn’t qualify it with an explanation. They couldn’t even distance themselves from the quote with a disclaimer that the Republicans were far worse on women’s’ issues. All they could do was acknowledge that Ms. Rosen’s comment did not portray the true essence of working and stay-at-home mothers and the difficulties they face. And far worse, they had to sit back and allow the Republicans to stand on their soapboxes and pretend their policies do.

     After a week of enduring this bullshit it’s time to take back the control of this discussion and set them straight before it’s too late. The Democrats had their chance to do just that when Ann Romney opened that door with her hypocritical assertion that we must defend every woman’s right to make choices. Really? The Republican Party is now the pro-choice party? Once again the Democrats blew it. They let that one slide and the damage is done. Nobody can un-ring that bell.

     The Republican Party has undone decades of abandonment of women’s’ rights by spinning one off-the-cuff comment from a well meaning CNN commentator. No other event could have given them such a golden opportunity to repair that damage in one afternoon like this one has. Now it’s the Democrats who are seen scrambling to capture the women vote by standing by an issue they took for granted as their own until now.  

     This is by far the best thing that has happened to the Romney campaign in a year. In fact his best and only asset is his wife. He’s even considering the legality of choosing her as his running mate. He may have to. The Romney campaign is also a lot like the Titanic. Nobody wants to take the job as First Mate on a sinking ship.

 

• What would Reagan do?:

     Personally, I am sick and tired of hearing Democrats from President Obama on down praising Ronald Reagan. Quoting his quaint foibles and anecdotal tidbits of Americana all the time is bad enough. But this business of pointing out policies and doctrines of The Great Communicator as if they had any foundation in truth and deserved respect on the merits is just plain foolish.

     This little game Democrats like to play where they think they’re making a point by drawing on the contrast to the current state of the GOP by asking what Reagan would do, was a cute distraction the first few dozen times it was drawn from the holster. It’s starting to wear thin now.

    Let’s put this nonsense to rest once and for all. Ronald Reagan was an actor. He earned a living pretending to be whatever his director told him to be. He read his lines with measured emotion and used his body language and facial expressions to convey the essence of whatever character he was being paid to play. A lifetime of perfecting his craft gave him the uncanny ability to deliver his lines and stand on his mark as he was told, with true precision and believability. As an anti-communist card carrying member of the NRA, and the talent to tell a lie with such conviction you wouldn’t dare doubt his sincerity, he was a perfect choice to play the part of the President.

     Ronald Reagan prospered from the benefits of his education in the field of theatrics and illusion. He was the consummate liar. Every time a Democrat quotes Reagan to sell a progressive point, they give legitimacy and truth to his words, as if he is one of us in our great struggle to fight the far right of his own party. The Reagan Presidency was the greatest con ever pulled on the American people, and his shocking re-election represents the Oscar for his performance. Any reference to his wisdom perpetuates the con and gives him a legitimacy he yearned for his whole miserable life, as a B-actor, a bit player desperate to be a leading man, and as a dreamer who wanted to be President. Or at least play one on TV.

     This notion that quoting Reagan will get the American people to accept tax increases and tax reform is ludicrous. First you have to get the American people to believe that Reagan was sincere in his words. Second you have to get them to acknowledge that Reagan was the biggest tax and spend President in history until George W. Bush broke that record. And third, President Obama and all these other desperate Democrats have to qualify that Ronald Reagan was lying with every quote they attribute to him.

 

• PAH and tarballs, 2 years later:

     On the two year anniversary of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and the worst environmental disaster in history, more than 100,000 victims and businesses are still waiting for justice. In an agreement that clearly favors the perpetrators of this unsolved crime, BP is being permitted to walk away from this mess with a slap on the wrist amounting to $7.8 billion. On paper, the company is still liable for future claims and lawsuits that can come up, but they are pooling all their resources at their disposal to fight any of that from ever happening. They’ve already asked a judge for an indefinite stay against any future trials to shield themselves from any further expense. That includes potential losses from claims in the tens of billions from the Gulf States, lawsuits for loss of income by businesses and industries driven into bankruptcy by the spill, and fines for serious violations of the Clean Water Act by the U.S. Government. 

     Besides the tragedy of the 11 platform workers who were killed in the initial explosion and fire and the untold numbers of future victims who will eventually succumb to serious health issues brought about by exposure to the 4.9 million barrels (that’s 269.5 million gallons) of crude oil that spilled into the gulf waters and was never recovered, the other environmental crisis that is yet to be fully realized is the deadly consequence of BP dumping 1.9 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants in their desperate attempt to sink the oil to the bottom of the sea. The most toxic ingredient in the dispersants is a carcinogenic chemical called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH.  This could be a greater danger to the planet than the original oil spill, and on that basis alone every BP executive responsible should have been sent to prison.  

     While they spend millions hiring teams of lawyers to fight their legal battles in court, BP is running quaint ads on television using actors who fit the bill as the cultural images of Bayou fishermen we’d expect to see, praising what a splendid job BP has done in the gulf cleanup operation and how the region has made a complete recovery. According to them there is no sign that there ever was an oil spill. Is that possible? Seekers of the truth say otherwise.   

     Marine biologists and oceanography scientists who have been studying the environmental effects on the Gulf, are uncovering some really disturbing findings. Horrifying mutations are being reported, like shrimp being born without eyes, crabs without claws and shell spikes, and fish with tumors and lesions. Oyster beds are being decimated to the point of no return. Dolphins are giving birth to calves with developmental deformities, and a large number are still births. Sea creatures are continuously being found with black tar inside their gills from sucking in water contaminated with oil residue to this day.

     The numbers of crustaceans and shellfish is way below normal levels recorded before the spill, and this may be a permanent outcome. Fishing nets are coming up still clogged with oil, and tarballs are still washing up on the beaches along the Gulf.

     With over 40% of all the seafood sold throughout the U.S. coming from the gulf coast region, this should be a real concern for everyone who sells seafood as well as anyone who enjoys eating it. Owners of fisheries that supply seafood to restaurants are asking the EPA, the FDA and the Federal Government to grant them immunity from lawsuits that will surely occur as people get sick from a poisoned food supply. Of course, the Government refuses to comply with such a request. They’re more inclined to continue protecting BP, Shell and every other corporate giant invested in offshore drilling ventures from their litigation problems.

      By the way, BP isn’t denying the findings. On the contrary, they really don’t give a shit one way or the other how high the poison levels are in the food chain. As long as they don’t exceed the federal FDA guidelines on exactly how much PAH is permitted in the seafood you eat, they feel confident that they have all the protection they need. Of course we know why those guidelines are there in the first place. To protect corporations from any legal action taken against them. The fact is PAH is a cancer causing toxin no matter how you measure it. It’s deadly to all life at any level. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a crawfish or a human being. Politically, it makes perfect sense for the Government to minimize the danger by setting acceptable standards that sound safe. BP stays in business, and so do local fish and seafood purveyors. Remember that the next time you order a Louisiana shrimp cocktail.

     The last major spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the Ixtoc-1 disaster in the Yucatan Peninsula in 1979. It’s been 33 years and the ecology still has not recovered from that one. The 1989 Exxon Valdeez oil spill in Alaska destroyed an entire herring habitat that never came back. In the meantime there have been no advances in the technology to prepare and deal safely with a major oil spill since either. But why should there be? What is the incentive for oil companies to spend millions planning and preparing for an ecological crisis like this? Especially since they were shielded by legislation their own industry lobbied for that capped their liability to $75 million. The mounting costs for the Deepwater Horizon are in the billions with no end in sight.

     One thing that is certain as this continuing saga unfolds, is that BP will not suffer an iota of pain for the criminal negligence they are guilty of. Including the $37.2 billion they have already allegedly paid out, and the $7.8 billion they have agreed to pay out in this settlement to avoid court. They will do what all corporations do with their costs of doing business. They’ll pass it on to the consumers, which is what they’ve been doing all along anyway.

     There are only two scenarios that would have had any impact on the consequences of this disaster as well as those in the future. BP should have had to sacrifice every asset they have towards the cleanup and payout to the American citizens, and off-shore drilling should have been banned once and for all. While we wasted the last two years allowing BP, Transocean, and Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s old firm) to play musical chairs to the tune of “Who’s fault is it?”, people have gotten sick, people are dying, entire livelihoods held in families for generations were wiped out, and the delicate eco-system in the Mississippi delta and the rest of the Gulf has been damaged beyond repair. And with no one officially held to blame, and the industry as a whole completely off the hook, nothing has changed in the last two years or the last 33 years to prevent this the next time. And there will be a next time.

     Responsibility has to fall with the White House and the failure to address this as an ongoing and permanent crisis instead of letting BP set the agenda and the direction of the dialogue. At the very least, President Obama had the opportunity to call for a moratorium on off shore drilling until the accident and its causes were fully investigated and explained. The criminals responsible should have been held accountable in every way the law allowed, and then we should have made new laws to go after them when it wasn’t. Instead any chance of finding solutions or establishing future protections washed out to sea, even as the oil slick was washing ashore.

 

• The “Blame Bush” game:

     The Washington Times is accusing President Obama of reverting back to blaming George Bush for the state of the economy. As if to say he isn’t too blame? The sad thing is that after 3 ½ years of Obama pandering to the Tea Party and the right-wing of the obstructionist Republican Party, they think they’re slandering him with something he should have been doing all along. We would not be in this mess if he made it his mission to remind the American people of the high crimes and misdemeanors of their former President. Every action, every agenda, every word out of his mouth should have been directed at reversing 8 miserable years of decay and neglect on the part of the Bush Administration instead of giving him a respectful Presidential pass.

     Mitt Romney is basing his whole campaign on the theory that Obama’s $700 billion stimulus was a failure. It was. But not because of the dollar numbers. They were way too little. Plus it was a carry over from the Bush/Paulson plan. It was a failure because there was too much hesitancy and angst over its implementation. The Obama administration got bogged down in stupid debates over raising the debt and worrying about who was going to pay for it. Something the Republicans never gave a shit about when Republican Presidents like Reagan and Bush did it. It was nothing but a distraction tossed into the water by the Tea Party and the President took the bait. Once he nibbled, they knew he was hooked. His agenda, his mandate, his very mission in life was derailed and we wasted the rest of his first (and if they have their way, his only) term worrying about the debt and the deficit instead of saving the economy and creating job opportunities for small businesses. The $700 billion stimulus was a complete bust because it accomplished nothing except bailing out the banks on Wall Street, and there was no confidence that there would be more available if it became necessary. It was necessary but the President was rendered impotent to even attempt to ask for more.

     Now Romney can say Obama’s policies didn’t work and he’d be right. But not because the President spent too much time and money implementing them. It’s just the opposite. He spent too little time fighting for a true progressive agenda, and held back on the funding when it mattered most. The answer is not to go back in time and not spend the $700 billion. The answer is to spend at least another $700 billion more.

     Right from the beginning it was clear that President Obama was not going to go after anyone in the Bush administration for what they did. As soon as he turned his back on that responsibility, he owned it. It was he himself who insisted on not looking back, but moving forward. Now he’s facing an uphill battle to win re-election and he’s resorting to reminding the American people that this is all George Bush’s fault after all. He’s out on the campaign trail telling voters how bad it was between 2000 and 2008. It was and we all know it. Unfortunately this is the first time in 3 ½ years that he’s said a word about it. Now it’s too late to have any real impact.  

     And here’s the funny part. The Republicans are claiming that Obama is playing the “blame Bush game” again because his policies have been a total failure. Again? His policies have been a total failure because he hasn’t played the “blame Bush game” at all.

 

• Mitt Romney is constituency intolerant:

      Mitt Romney has a problem with certain areas of the population and it could cost him the Presidency if not resolved by November. In overall polling he isn’t trailing that far behind President Obama. But on specific issues in front of specific demographics, his numbers plummet. His advisors have convinced him that he can deflect this crisis by carefully choosing a running mate that addresses some of these core issues he’s weak on.

     So all he has to do now is find a trans-gender, bi-racial, Hispanic Jew-for-Jesus who happens to be a union card-carrying veteran from a right-to-work state and supports gay engagements, the right to carry firearms with blanks, contraception for seniors, the death penalty for redwood loggers, and community service for whale hunters living below the poverty line. If he can come up with such a person who has all those attributes and has never been in the State of Massachusetts or Utah, and chooses him or her for his Vice-Presidential candidate he’s home free.

 

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

April 20^th, 2012

 

 

 

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 2

April 7^th- April 13^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Letting his true feelings out: Senator Grassley hides out in Twitterland
• The world’s largest sweatshop: China lurches ahead with slave labor
• No ENDA in sight: The White House extends LGBT discrimination
• Hey Jules, don’t make it bad: John Lennon’s forgotten son’s birthday
• Presidential road trip: Barack Obama takes the wheel

 

• Letting his true feelings out:

     Back in 2009 during the health care reform debate, or should I say debacle, President Obama had nice words to say about those he described as the few Republicans willing to negotiate in good faith. Of course little did he know he was being stabbed in the back by those same so-called moderates. One in particular was Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Wonder why that name sounds familiar? Think “Watch out! Obama wants to kill grandma”. Yeah that’s him.

     The President went out of his way to refer to this slime ball by name as someone he could work with. In fact he said, “Now I think there are some of my friends on Capitol Hill [Senator Grassley to name a few] who are sincerely trying to figure out if they can find a health care bill that works.” He went on to say “They are diligently working to see if they can come up with a plan that can get Republican and Democratic support”.

     This was the moment early in Obama’s Presidency when the train derailed. You see either he was totally naïve or else his advisors fell asleep at the switch. I’d like to know who the hell fed him this bullshit anyway.

     This represents the crucial moment when he should have recognized three significant things about his relationship with Republicans in Congress and adjusted his entire strategy accordingly. First of all, he had no Republican friends on Capitol Hill. Second, the Republicans haven’t known what sincerity means since the night John McCain lost the election. And third, and most important because it represented the death knell for health care reform, was the wide-eyed notion that anyone in the Republican Party had any intention of doing anything with due diligence for the next four years.

     This is what Senator Grassley had to say this week about the President who singled him out as one of the few Republicans still left with a sense of decency and respect. He called the President “stupid”. I will admit one thing. President Obama was foolish to trust Senator Grassley and every other bastard in Congress who, with one hand, gingerly encouraged him to walk the plank while holding a handsaw with the other. That was stupid.

 

• The world’s largest sweatshop:

     It wasn’t too long ago that the United States of America was the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of consumer goods. Today that honor goes to China. How did we reach that pinnacle only to lose our way, and what are we doing about it?

     We got there by inventing the safest, highest paid, and most productive work force on the planet, as reflected by the great successes of the most empowered middle class in history. With CEO salaries proportionally in line with the lowest paid workers, everybody benefited, but most of all the American family. We lost it by allowing greed and corruption to steal our moral compass. And as long as we permit our elected officials to line their own pockets under this system, we will never again witness that kind of prosperity in America.

     There were three stages in the development of manufacturing in America that eventually led to the U.S. becoming the economic powerhouse it once was. The first leg was the Industrial Revolution from 1820 to 1870. The explosion of new technologies and inventions sparked the transformation from making hand-made products at home to machine production in factories. After the Panic of 1899 and the banking scandals at the turn of the century, the country fell into the Great Depression. Nothing was being produced and there was no money to buy anything with.

     The second leg of this journey began as we crawled our way out of that hole in the 1930’s with FDR’s New Deal. There was no need to search very far for a willing work force and all those manufacturing companies in need of loans became the banks new best friends. The banks that survived the economic collapse at least. They were now flush with cash after being saved by government bailouts, thanks to the creation of the Federal Reserve, which helped bring on the Depression in the first place.

     Factories rose up from the dust of the Depression, taking full advantage of the desperation of a generation of idle workers, willing to work under extreme conditions and powerless to complain about them. Workers rights were never an issue for factory owners and hourly pay was whatever company bosses could get away with. All they had to worry about was keeping the assembly lines moving. Corporate giants like General Motors left the day to day union busting and head busting to their hired goons.

     Eventually, after much bloodshed and loss of life, the unionization of American workers brought the demand for shorter work days, safer conditions, and the rise of the collective bargaining system. Millions now entered the work force with renewed hope of being able to afford to raise a family, instead of just accepting table scraps that fell from employers’ plates. Many people who came from generations of working poor, who never had a sliver of hope in their dismal lives, suddenly found themselves living in a time where they would be able to give their children better lives than their own parents had. For the first time in their lives they truly believed they could see the future.

     The third leg didn’t come about because the Depression ended. It came about after the onset of World War II. That’s how the Depression ended. It not only put the entire country back to work, but it put American manufacturing into high gear. War may not be good for children and other living things, but it’s always good for the economy. The United States was not decimated and left in ruins when the war ended, as was the case in Europe and Asia, so we had a clear advantage to get back on our feet ahead of everybody else. With a world-wide demand for American made goods and an endless supply of workers with renewed hope for their futures, manufacturing skyrocketed into the stratosphere by the 1960’s. The American dream was alive and well, and crossed all lines of class and status.

     We led the world in manufacturing, innovation, and production as we inched our way towards fairness and opportunity in the work place, and because the American workers were protected by strong union representation. Of course women and minorities were lagging far behind on that score, but at least we were heading in the right direction ahead of the rest of the world. Then one day Richard Nixon went to China, setting in motion a series of events that changed the world as we knew it. Everything we worked for was about to disintegrate before our eyes. Nixon may have built us a coffin, but George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton drove the final nails in.

     Opening up new markets and bringing China and the Third World into the 20^th century before we saw it end is not what lead to our demise. It was unfair trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT, and allowing corporations to reap huge tax benefits and huge profits by out-sourcing and using off-shore havens that caused our demise. What took us one hundred years to accomplish, China did in only twenty.

      In the old days, when we imagined what life must be like in China, we conjured up images of one billion Chinese peasants, all dressed in the same drab green khakis, wearing conical bamboo hats and kicking up dust storms with their bicycles. So it might surprise you to learn that their fastest growing demographic today is their super-rich. They even have a name for them. In China they’re called the Fudai. In the U.S. we just call ours Republicans. In a world with 10 million millionaires and 1,226 billionaires, China now has over 1 million and 270, respectively. This may seem miniscule in a country with 1.3 billion people, but remember this is a phenomenon that burst onto the scene in the last 20 years while still operating under Communist rule. Meanwhile in this country our fastest growing demographic is the millions of working poor cascading below the poverty line.

     Everyone knows that China is now the world’s largest exporter of consumer goods. Everything from hi-tech electronics to crappy souvenirs at the Disney Emporium are all made in China. All the top manufacturing firms in the world today have China to thank for providing them with the essential ingredients for maximizing profits and minimizing costs. Something we could not provide our own factories in America any more. A cheap underpaid labor force, unregulated working conditions, and a breeding ground for greedy shop owners willing to exploit anyone for profit. CEO’s of many U.S. corporations would have loved to return to that Golden Age in American history. They couldn’t, but they’ve achieved the next best thing. They created a new one in China. That explains the enormous profits being generated for companies like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Erickson, Toshiba, Sony, Phillips, Microsoft, Best Buy, IBM, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, Toyota, Ford, Mattel, Officemax, and let’s not forget the biggest of them all- Apple. Meanwhile the American rust-belt continues to decay with no hope of recovery.

     The entire world is clamoring for I-Pods, laptops, and big screen TV’s at the cheapest prices and China fills that need because Chinese workers are forced to work in unbearable work environments, brutally long overtime hours without compensation, and unsafe conditions that rival any sweatshops in America in the 1930’s. Employees of the Chinese manufacturers that produce all these toys we can’t live without face tough production quotas, harsh punishments for mistakes and delays on the assembly line, and toxic and dangerous work environments that cause debilitating illnesses, severe injuries, and premature deaths.

     And that’s not the only thing that shortens the lives of Chinese workers. Despair and hopelessness results in an extremely high rate of suicide. In fact, while their company bosses refuse to sign union contracts protecting workers rights, workers are forced to sign contracts called “Letters of Commitment to Cherish Life”. In essence, Chinese workers must sign a pledge not to kill themselves. If they do they’ll face a dock in pay and the humiliation of having their picture posted on the “slackers” bulletin board. That’s almost as bad as making Republicans in Congress sign a pledge not to raise taxes.

     There’s rampant discrimination, child exploitation, and physical and mental abuse in Chinese factories. These kinds of horror stories offend our morals and ethics we’ve become accustomed to. Not enough to get us to boycott their products, but just enough to allow us to reach that level of indignation that makes us cringe with guilt. Once that passes, we hand over our credit cards anyway. The funny thing is these offenses even violate Chinese union rules and labor laws. You’re probably shocked to realize they even have any. They do. But they’re watered down mockeries of what they pretend to be, totally ineffectual and rarely enforced. In fact they only exist on paper to protect huge investors in the Chinese economy like Apple from embarrassment and future litigation.

     But as horrific as all this sounds, it’s not the only thing that has contributed to China’s fantastic economic growth. It’s not even the worst of it. Besides having the largest population, the largest standing army, and the largest GDP on Earth, they have something else too. They have the largest slave labor penal colony in the world. It’s an elaborate labyrinth of prisons called the Laogai, meaning “reform through labor”. More than 50 million people have been processed through the system since Mao started the franchise in 1949, with at least half of them dying in pursuit of their salvation. China likes to pretend they’ve abolished the practice, but there are still over a 1,000 of these forced labor camps spread throughout the country, with millions of men and women still being locked up without trial to this day for offenses against the State such as religious or political dissent, or blogging that they didn’t like the Premier’s tie.

     They’re worked to death filling the gap left by China’s burgeoning manufacturing network already pumping at full capacity just to feed the world’s voracious appetite. Chinese government authorities claims that, even if it were true that the camps were still operational, which they continue to deny, an insignificant amount of their overall production of goods comes from prison labor, if there was such a thing.

     And just because the President of the United States has lunch with Premier Wen Jiabao doesn’t mean this barbarism isn’t still going on in China today. They just don’t discuss it over the shrimp cocktails. Mao may be gone but his legacy lives on. They’ve just learned how to make fortunes off of it.

     The little attention we shamefully give to North Korea’s slave labor gulags, considered the worst in the world, is at least something. We will never talk about Chinese gulags and their deplorable human rights violations. Keeping relations with China on an even keel without making any waves is job number one for the U.S. State Department and the Department of Commerce. If we have to look the other way once in a while, to give China a chance to hide their skeletons, that’s a small price to pay for maintaining our thriving economy, such as it is.

 

• No ENDA in sight:

     This may come as a shock to many Americans but there is no current law on the books that bans public or private contractors from discriminating against people because of the color of their skin. Okay, that is against the law. That was just to get your attention. Try this one. There is no current law on the books that bans public or private contractors from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation. Now I’m not kidding. This freedom to fire an employee simply because you don’t like their personal lifestyles, let alone the way they happen to have been born, extends to federal contractors who receive billions in government contracts and who currently employ 22% of the work force.

     In my opinion, President Obama showed true cowardice by not repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” through executive order as soon as he got elected, although he had the authority and the moral responsibility to do so. The gays and lesbians were a large part of the constituency that voted him into office, so there was a reasonable sense of betrayal when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. But they felt some vindication when Congress took the reigns and got it done anyway, and they’ve been more than willing to give President Obama the credit.

     Now the opportunity to finish the job has come full circle with the legislation floundering in Congress that would ban discrimination by employers against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and trans-gender (LGBT) individuals, especially companies that receive government contracts. The fact that this is still not the law, 48 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, is shameful. The fact that President Obama and Congress have to even debate such a basic civil rights issue in the 21^st century is appalling.

     The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is stalled in Congress along with the budget for the last three years, all the President’s judicial appointments, and everything else they’ve been unable to get done. In fact, the only thing they’ve managed to get passed quickly was the extension of the Bush tax cuts. ENDA remains in limbo where it’s been wallowing since its introduction as a bill back in 1994. At that time there was certainly no hope of getting any support from the very same President who gave us DADT in the first place. And George Bush certainly wasn’t going to touch that one. So who did the backers of this bill finally turn to as their last best hope? Candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

     Once again, a strong left wing constituency crucial to the President’s re-election turns to him for leadership and justice, not to mention to get him to live up to a campaign promise from 2008, and once again, he turns his back on them. The White House has announced in a quiet press release that while the President is in full support, on principle, of their cause, he in not interested in risking his re-election by going out on a limb on civil rights for homosexuals and cross-dressers at this time.

     There’s been a lot of pressure from the LGBT community and many liberal and moderate members of Congress for President Obama to use his executive powers this time around to pass this crucial piece of legislation, considering that this is one of the last acceptable civil rights violations in America. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen, not this close to an election, campaign promise not withstanding. His answer to this call for justice was to let Congress deal with it, knowing full well they won’t. He feels their pain, but off the hook anyway.

     This is an outrageous abandonment of basic civil rights for political expediency. The last time a President stood on the side of civil rights legislation at great risk to his presidency was when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though he was warned that it will cost him the South and probably his election in November. He said that was a price he would gladly pay to get this bill passed. The only President who’s come even close to that kind of courage was Jimmy Carter. Now look what it got them.

     There isn’t a Democrat alive who will ever invoke either one of those names in public. This is how low this country has descended. Today the only position this or any President will take a moral stand on is going to war and defending his religious convictions.

 

• Hey Jules, don’t make it bad:

     A rock star’s fame and fortune sometimes comes with a heavy price tag for loved ones in their orbit. All too often a child of a music idol grows up just outside the perimeter with the rest of the adoring fans behind the velvet ropes. All too often they get lost in the maddening crowd, trampled by the mobs who all want a chance to touch the hem of the celebrity’s garment.

     Julian Lennon, the first born son of John Lennon, turns 49 years old today, April 8th. From the moment of his birth, he was a victim of Beatlemania and its awesome power. Fearing repercussions of news getting out that a Beatle was married with a new baby, and what it would do to the aura of the world’s most famous teen idols, young Julian’s birth and life were kept secret, so as not to tarnish that image. His self-esteem and self-worth was all downhill from there. Watching the magical mystery tour that was his father’s world through the glass but never being allowed to touch it himself left Julian Lennon alone and forgotten just outside the world The Beatles created.

      Paul McCartney, who was in some ways closer to young Julian than his father was, felt compassion for the emotional roller coaster the young boy was riding during his parent’s messy divorce in 1968. He even wrote him a song to help him get through it. It was originally called “Hey Jules”. Of course we know it as the Beatles masterpiece, “Hey Jude”.

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,

take a sad song and make it better”

     John Lennon couldn’t really face the damage he had done nor could he fully appreciate the feelings of lost opportunity until his second son, Sean, with Yoko Ono was born. His wonderfully heart-felt song to his new young son, “Beautiful Boy”, puts into poetry and music the tragic consequences of allowing life to swallow you whole and steal those most precious moments you can never get back, no matter how much money you make. He was now in a position to shower his second son with the kind of love and affection he was unable to give his first. The words were sung to Sean, but the emotion was felt for what he lost with Julian.

“Before you cross the street,

take my hand.

Life is what happens to you

while you’re busy making other plans”

     After years of inner loneliness and pain, hunting for an identity he could call his own, Julian Lennon became a musician and artist in his own right. He will never completely break free from the undeniable bond as the son of John Lennon, but maybe a part of him doesn’t really want to lose it, for what ever it’s worth.        

     Just an interesting little side note here. If you’re in the market for a 5,100-square-foot three bedroom apartment with a 100’ frontage including eight huge windows overlooking Central Park in Manhattan’s exclusive upper west side, one has just become available. With a depressed housing market and an abundance of inventory out there, this one’s a steal at $29.6 million.

     Not all that unusual for ultra-prime New York City real estate with 12’-high ceilings and seven fireplaces. If you lean over the balcony, you can almost touch the passing Thanksgiving Day Parade floats as they go by. But this particular address is no ordinary condo building. This is The Dakota. Among its prestigious tenants is Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon. He was murdered just outside on the sidewalk 31 years ago last December 8th.

     John Lennon would have been 71 years old on October 9^th, 2011. By sheer coincidence that’s the same day Sir Paul McCartney married his third wife. Or is it?

 

• Presidential road trip:

     Barack Obama is driving along the international superhighway in a red, white, and blue Prius with a miniature American flag on the antenna. Sitting next to him in the passenger seat is a prominent representative of his progressive base named Wendy Workingmom. She’s a left-wing, pro-choice, lesbian environmentalist with a union card. In her spare time she likes to chain herself to giant redwoods and rescue kittens from drainpipes. In the backseat are three of the world’s most annoying scoundrels, Armani Dinner Jacket, Ping pong-Un, and Bash-head the Ass.

     The President is trying desperately to convince Wendy that he’s heading in the right direction but she’s not convinced. She begs him to use her GPS anyway, claiming it’s been calibrated to favor liberal searches. As they argue back and forth over which way to go, he points out to her something he learned from his predecessor- that he’s the decider. She acquiesces on that point but responds emphatically that although that may be technically true, they’re the ones that bought him the car. “Touché”, he shoots back, giving her an energetic thumbs-up.

     Meanwhile, those three troublemakers are creating quite a ruckus back there. Armani keeps ranting about how the Jews invented the Holocaust as he advances his nuclear program on his smart phone. Ping is crying into a silk handkerchief because all his missiles are turning out to be duds. If he has to endure any more of these shameful episodes, he’ll have to kill himself in the public square. Bash-head is trying to live up to his Father’s image as a murderous thug. So he keeps standing up through the open sunroof and firing rocket-grenades into the crowds along the thoroughfare.

     Wendy keeps complaining that the President is not being attentive enough to their needs. He tries to explain to her that he only said all those things so she’d take a ride with him. He couldn’t possibly do all those things he promised. Besides if he doesn’t address the situation developing behind him, he’ll look weak and get labeled as impotent, or worse, a socialist. It’s bad enough that those Tea Party members keep rallying on every street corner, throwing eggs at the car every time he makes a left turn.

     Figuring that she’ll be okay if anything serious happens because she’s got front and side-curtain airbags, he decides he’s better off dealing with these political crisis’, if just to show his enemies that he’s got what it takes to be every bit as tough as George Bush was. He draws the line at insisting on wearing his seatbelt though. Maybe he’ll eventually get the nerve to go commando like Bush had, but that’ll have to wait until his second term.

     With growing concern that their shenanigans will surely cause him to get into a wreck with the car, the President glares into the rearview mirror and yells, “Don’t make me pull this car over!”, as he swerves to remain in his lane. Suddenly he’s faced with a real dilemma. Wendy is threatening to jump out of the car if he stays on this course, but his bigger nightmare right now is that these ruffians might just be reckless enough to call his bluff. He weighs his options and convinces himself that she would never be foolish enough to leap from a moving vehicle, and besides, where would she go anyway? The country has all but abandoned her, so it’s unlikely that anyone is going to pick her up on the side of the road. He counts on her remaining for the duration and focuses on more pressing matters.

     Polling numbers are coming through on his hands-free headset. They’re telling him its time to take action so he swings his right arm over the back of the seat and starts smacking a few heads just to show them who’s boss. The GPS is beeping, alerting him that his exit is coming up and he could miss it.

     He sees the highway sign up ahead: “Last Chance For Re-election- Bear Right”.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

April 13^th, 2012

 

 

 

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 7, Issue 1

March 31^st- April 6^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Murder in Memphis: 1968, the year the FBI had a dream
• Black sites and black holes: CIA rendition and Government permission
• Espionage, Act I: 1912-2012, one hundred years of tyranny in America
• Pakistan grabs a Bin Laden: Too bad it’s too late and it’s the wrong ones
• Revisiting the Falklands: Sunset on the British Empire
• It’s 1996 all over again: Deserving it without earning it
• An Easter Story: Death on the cross, resurrection, and chocolate bunnies
• Levi strikes again: No carry permit required

 

• Murder in Memphis:

     January 15^th is a national holiday. It was established to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. What hypocrites we are. We can’t even figure out how to honor what he stood for. We get so hung up on phony meaningless pursuits in this country like trying to prove how far we’ve advanced in living Dr. King’s vision, and in the meantime we still haven’t been able to solve the mystery of how he was murdered. We fool ourselves into believing that electing a black man for President fulfills his dream, when in reality we owe it to him to track down his real killers. Start with J. Edgar Hoover.

     Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been born on January 15^th, 1929, but April 4^th, 1968 is truly a day that will live in infamy. That’s the day we should all be taking pause to contemplate on. Because what took place on that day in Memphis was as consequential for this nation as November 22^nd, 1963 in Dallas was. Both tragedies involved widespread conspiracies within our Government that drastically changed the course of this nation’s future. Two transformational leaders with three things in common- pushing a civil rights agenda, ending the Vietnam War, and both were despised by the radical right in this country- were gunned down in the streets right under the very noses of the FBI and local law enforcement people who were also at the epicenter of the massive cover-ups concocted to hide the truth. Extraordinary tales of extremely resourceful lone gunmen with superpowers that allowed them to be in two places at once, the financial wherewithal to travel the globe, and the good fortune to have fantastic coincidences fall in their laps at the very moments they needed them most. And let’s not forget magic bullets that appeared out of nowhere.

     In November of 1963, while President Kennedy was the most guarded man in America, the FBI and the CIA had someone else in their peripheral vision. Their attention was also directed at a reclusive manic-depressive pro-Castro Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was under heavier Government surveillance when he returned from his failed attempt to defect to the Soviet Union than he was before he left. But suddenly, on the morning of the 22^nd, they lost Oswald in the crowd on the very day the President of the United States’ parade route was altered to travel right past his place of employment- the Texas School Book Depository building. The eyes of every FBI agent, Secret Service agent, and Dallas policeman were scanning every inch of Dealy Plaza looking for signs of danger, but somehow they all blinked at the same moment and managed to miss the rifle sticking out of the sixth story window. An unfortunate breach of security led to the most miraculous rifle shot in history, one that experts with far more skills that Oswald have been unable to duplicate.

     In April of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most guarded man in America. In fact he was also the FBI’s most investigated man in America. There was more audio and video surveillance on every aspect of his public and private life than anyone else on J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies list. On April 4th in Memphis, Tennessee there were FBI agents and local police officers crawling all over the Lorraine Hotel, just to make sure they didn’t miss King sneaking a woman up to his room or something.

     For some strange reason, they picked April 4^th to ease off on their efforts to keep an eye on him. With all that technology and firepower surrounding him, the FBI felt confident enough to take a nap. It was at that exact moment in space and time that the second floor balcony was in the perfect line of fire of the open window in the boarding house across the street where James Earl Ray just happened to have a room. This petty thief with no previous record of violence suddenly heard someone knocking on the door. It turned out to be opportunity, so of course he opened it. All he needed now was for the Memphis Police Chief to arbitrarily pull his security detail from their post outside Dr. King’s hotel room, just as he was stepping out onto that balcony for some fresh air. When James Earl Ray read his horoscope that morning, little did he know just how aligned the stars were in his favor. With a single rifle shot, he accomplished what J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI couldn’t, although they were trying desperately since 1963. Or at least that’s what we’re supposed to accept as fact. This broken down loser who could barely afford bus fare out of town suddenly found the resources to escape to England, one step ahead of the greatest manhunt in history.

     And just in case anyone is interested in what’s in the hundreds of hours of video and audio recordings of Dr. King’s every movement up until the moments before he was murdered, we’ll have to wait a little longer. They’re locked away by court order in the National Archives, sealed away in boxes until 2027. In fact, they’re on the same shelf right alongside the boxes containing all the evidence in the Kennedy assassination. President Johnson insisted that the Warren Commission ignore them and then had them locked away too.

     Two months after the murder of Martin Luther King, the right wing’s worst nightmare and the country’s next President of the United States, Bobby Kennedy, was gunned down, supposedly by a disenfranchised Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan. He somehow managed to blend in with the kitchen staff at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where he remained quietly lurking behind the ice machine until he could make his move. Sounds plausible except for one detail. Nobody knew the Senator was going to exit through the kitchen because he wasn’t planning to.

     When Bobby Kennedy was finished with his victory speech he was supposed to exit through the lobby and out the front door. His security people grabbed his arm as he was greeting the adoring crowd and said there was a change in plans. They had to go out through the kitchen. Either Sirhan was the most intuitive person alive or else he had a remarkable ability to turn on a dime and re-evaluate his plans the second circumstances changed. We’ll never know the answer to that riddle just like we’ll never know what happened to the kitchen doorjamb that the FBI had mysteriously ripped out of there after the shooting. It was riddled with stray bullets which added up to more shots than could possibly be fired from Sirhan’s handgun without reloading. Perhaps the evidence proving that the bullet that killed Bobby Kennedy didn’t even come from Sirhan’s gun may have something to do it.

     This killing of the United States Senator destined to beat Richard Nixon in the upcoming elections was the third leg of the trifecta of political assassinations that forever altered the course of history, giving us President Nixon and 44 subsequent years of systematic dismantling of the Constitution.

     They have a name for people like me. People who don’t believe the Government’s fictionalized accounts that Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, or Sirhan Sirhan were capable of pulling off these murders all by themselves. They call us conspiracy nuts. Well I have a name for people who believe everything their government tells them, no matter how ludicrous it sounds, and who refuse to accept even the remote possibility of what their elected officials are capable of. Loyal subjects. 

 

• Black sites and black holes:

     The dim pre-dawn sun breaks through the early morning fog in a remote wooded enclave somewhere deep inside Poland. Visible through the mist is the image of the guard towers, the barbed wire fences, and the signs in Polish, warning the curious to stay away. Upon closer observation one can see what appears to be a some sort of old warehouse or abandoned factory but is in fact a prison, tucked away in the Polish landscape. Rumors abound of prisoners being driven through the iron gates in the dead of night. If you got close enough you could still hear the screams from the torture chambers echoing off the concrete corridors. You’re not sure if you can believe your eyes since the official Government position is that this place doesn’t exist. This gets you thinking that you may have inadvertently fallen into some kind of time warp. What is this place? Auschwitz-Birkenau? Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor? Maybe it’s Treblinka.

     The shocking truth is that while this is a secret Government run prison, built exclusively for torture, this is not 1944, and this is not a Nazi death camp. It’s a CIA rendition prison. The first thing you need to ask yourself is what’s the difference? I know I am.

     Because for those of you who don’t know or understand what rendition is, it’s the authority given to the CIA by the Bush Administration to kidnap suspected terrorists as well as innocent bystanders caught up in the dragnets, and ship them off to foreign countries where they can be tortured for information without the distractions of having to adhere to the U.S. Constitution. Out of sight, out of mind? Not necessarily. Out of sight of the American people maybe, who are either too oblivious to the crimes their government was committing in their names or too brainwashed to give a damn. But not out of the minds of the White House, the Justice Department, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA. And while some members of Congress can claim ignorance because they were out of the loop, enough of them on key intelligence committees were well informed and well aware of what was going on and were more than willing to swallow that poisoned pill for their President.

     Outside the tiny village of Stare Kiejkuty lies one of countless CIA “black sites”, secret rendition prisons that operated freely outside the United States and the laws that would normally restrict them, although they are not out of reach of the World Court and the Geneva Conventions. This raises the serious question of how this is possible in a 21^st century post- World War II/Nuremburg Trials world. The truth is the United States is above the law. Or at least George W. Bush thought so. President Obama concurs. This is why such evil can exist under the full authority of the United States Government and in this case, with total cooperation from top officials in the Polish Government.

     The CIA began operating these houses of torture around the world after 9/11.

They have strenuously denied they ever existed as does the host countries, even though George Bush, the devil incarnate mastermind behind it, brags about the rendition program in his book “Decision Points”. Some of the other countries where they “never existed” are Afghanistan, Thailand, Egypt, Lithuania, Turkey, and Romania, just to name a few. Unless somebody has the courage to reveal the lurid details of this scandal, the CIA and all the U.S. government officials with blood on their hands will get what they’re counting on most- that secrecy and fear will keep CIA rendition and the black sites they lurk in, forever lost in the black holes of history. If only some participant in this house of horrors had found a conscience and come forward. Well, someone finally did.

    It was back in 2008, believe it or not, when shocking revelations of Bush’s rendition program came even as our official policy at the time was to continue denying the whole thing. Poland had just elected a new Prime Minister named Donald Tusk. He refused to live with the sin of what his country had participated in and decided to defy the will of the United States by exposing it. Poland became the first and only country to not only acknowledge the existence of CIA black sites on their soil but to begin serious investigations into the extent of the program with the intention of bringing charges of war crimes against whoever was connected and whoever was responsible, no matter how high up the food chain that may lead. This is now 2012 and he is still at it.

     Remember this all came out at the height of the 2008 Presidential campaign with a very real possibility that a progressive liberal would inherit the White House and all its dirty little secrets. Needless to say George Bush and Dick Cheney had their concerns. This was also the same year that Barack Obama made a campaign promise to do exactly what Prime Minister Tusk was embarking on. To expose the truth and punish those responsible. That was a lie, of course. Not only did he not pursue this scandal with the intensity that Poland is currently engaged in, but newly elected President Obama made sure that no one in the Bush Administration would ever see the inside of a courtroom, neither in the U.S. or The Hague. Poland’s fragile democracy is only 23 years old and already they have surpassed us in integrity and commitment to the basic principles of their new Constitution. At least their dedication to it is crisp and bright and full of promise. Ours is torn and tattered and full of shit.

     Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has promised a full and open investigation, including but not limited to the involvement of all the political figures in power at the time such as former President Aleksnander Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Both men have repeatedly denied the existence of the prisons, but also stick to their assertion that if such a violation of their Constitution was going on in Poland, they fully supported it, in theory, of course. Agreeing with the idea of rendition in principle is as far as they are willing to go, out of fear of being arrested for any deeper disclosures. George Bush, on the other hand, has no such fear, and therefore has no hesitation in not only openly supporting rendition in theory, but in bragging how successful it was in fact. He states quite unequivocally that he ordered the rendition of at least 100 prisoners. We also know for a fact that many of them died from their torture.  

     This quote from Prime Minister Tusk speaks volumes about the damage that this has done to his country and ours:

     “Poland is a democracy where national and international law must be observed. This issue must be explained. Let there be no doubt about it either in Poland or on the other side of the ocean.”

     Replace “Poland” with “The United States” in this quote and then see if you think you’ll ever hear President Obama utter those words while pursuing the full extent of this crime. Not this year, not in a million years. In fact, when the U.S. puts up a firewall to stop Tusk and anybody else from looking in the CIA and George Bush’s involvement in this war crime, we’ll know who the real criminals are and who truly believes in justice. The only difference between Auschwitz, Treblinka, and all the other death camps scattered across Poland, and all the CIA black sites scattered around the world, is that we are more arrogant than Nazis. We think we got away with it.

 

• Espionage, Act I:

     In the all the drama, or should I say melodrama, of this Presidential election here in 2012, I thought it would be interesting to go back to the election of 1912, one hundred years ago, and see what impact it had on modern America. It turns out there’s quite a connection.

    Things were somewhat different in American politics a century ago. For one thing we had strong viable third parties. Democrat Woodrow Wilson got less than 42% of the popular vote, but his greatest challenge wasn’t from the Republicans. It was from the Progressive Party. Theodore Roosevelt got 27.4% of the vote, while William Taft, the Republican only got 23.8%. Even the American Socialist Party took away 6%. That’s a total of 57.2% of the voting population that did not vote for Wilson. Third parties do matter and we desperately need that option today if we are ever going to move in the direction of salvaging this corrupt system. The only way to open that door is through serious campaign finance reform and the elimination of the Electoral College. But we’ll never see either one of those things until we get a Presidential candidate who not only tells the truth when he’s running, but sticks to it when he’s elected. Republicans like John McCain used to support reform (does anybody remember McCain-Feingold?) but then he had to drop that idea so he could win his party’s nomination. Barack Obama supported it too, but along came Citizens United, and now he has to outspend Mitt Romney, no small feat.  

     The election of 1912 was monumental in its own right because it opened the flood gates to two changes that affected America to this day. Woodrow Wilson did leave us legacies that strengthened America such as child labor laws and the 8-hour work week. But he also left us legacies that reversed the two things Thomas Jefferson feared most, besides being caught in bed with Sally. Losing our power to self-determination by succumbing to a central banking system and losing our sacred freedom of speech, perhaps the keystone of our Constitution. It was Woodrow Wilson who handed over control of our entire money supply to the Federal Reserve System and it was Wilson who may have single-handedly been responsible for destroying freedom of speech as we know it. You can trace President Obama’s assault on whistleblowers (so far he’s worse than George Bush was, and he’s only had one term) all the way back to President Woodrow Wilson’s assault on free speech with his legislation that allowed us to enter World War I without the support or consent of the American people. How did he do that, you ask? The Espionage Act of 1917. I’ve written of this before, but it bears repeating because it’s more relevant than ever, especially as we are about to hoist Barack Obama up on our collective shoulders for a second term.

     The powers that ran Washington after the turn of the 20^th century are the same masterminds that run it today. Big corporations, banks and modern day oil companies (in the early 1900’s it was railroads). And just like today, they all had the same goals and ambitions. To get the U.S. Government to engage us in as many wars and external conflicts as possible. War meant big business and big profits, just as much then as it does now. We see today how banks and multi-nationals dictate policy through bribery, payoffs, and kickbacks to politicians through lobbying. It was no different in 1914 when Europe was imploding into war. The same military/industrial complex that is always at the heart of America’s involvement in foreign wars was desperate to get the new President, Woodrow Wilson, to drag us into it.

     But the country was in no mood to get involved. In fact, Wilson slid by the re-election of 1916 on a campaign slogan of “He kept us out of war!”. But like all Presidents, what they promise in campaigns and what they deliver in office are two different things. And a candidate’s flirtations with common voters are fleeting, while romances with bankers and corporate donors are love affairs that last a lifetime. No sooner had Wilson won re-election on a promise to keep us out of the Great War, that he reversed course showing his true colors. Once he was re-elected he was free to embark on his “crusade to make the world safe for democracy”. The war was dragging on for three years already by 1917, and the profiteers were itching to get in on the action before it was too late. Nothing hurts the bottom line more than having peace break out before you’ve placed your bets. Peace ruins everything.

     Wilson’s biggest problem was that he still faced strong opposition from the American people. Back then we still had a strong third party participation in the political discussion. Along with the socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activist groups, they represented a real obstacle to getting us entangled overseas. Wilson needed something that would kill two birds with one stone. It had to be effective enough to shut down all news and media publications from dissenting while at the same time striking fear into the hearts and minds of everybody else from even daring to speak out in protest. He accomplished this and decimated free speech in America with the stroke of a pen, when he signed the Espionage Act into law.

     It was only 128 years since the framers at the Continental Congress established the Freedom of Speech clause, when in 1917 it was now illegal to speak out against the Government, whether in front of a small gathering of citizens on the street corner or in news print. Wilson even tried to pass a provision in the law that specifically gave him the power of censorship over the press while he pushed us into the War in Europe, but saner minds prevailed and it was taken out as part of a last minute compromise to ensure the bill got passed. To get around it, Wilson gave that power to the Postmaster General instead. Now it was he who had discretion on the distribution of any and all materials considered anti-government and seditious, thereby permitting him to refuse to deliver it through the Postal Service. This alone shut down virtually all the dissenting voices in the news publications in America. Everyone depended on mail deliver to get their newspapers and magazines. Remember, there was no Internet back then. Al Gore wasn’t even born yet.

     It didn’t take long for this unconstitutional piece of legislation to start working in Wilson’s favor. One of the first victims of the Espionage Act was the American Socialist Party advocate and editor of the socialist leaning newspaper, the St. Louis-based National Rip-Saw, Kate Richards O’Hare. She was arrested and imprisoned for 5 years for giving an anti-war speech after our entrance into World War I.

     That was followed by another Socialist Party alumnus, Eugene V. Debs, their Presidential candidate in 1904, 1908, and 1912. Soon after enactment of the Espionage Act, President Wilson desperately needed an avenue to solicit volunteers, with or without their consent, to supply the war effort with all the bodies it required to maintain the necessary troop levels. In the end that turned out to be 4,272,500 Americans, of which 117,000 fell on the battle fields and trenches and 204,000 were wounded. The only way to sustain such a massive flow of soldiers was the draft which was gaining resistance from leaders like Debs who spoke out it. For exercising that right he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for it.

     Robert Goldstein was a producer in the early days of motion pictures. He produced a movie called “Spirit of ‘76”, showing the cruelty of Great Britain towards the Colonists during the American Revolution. Anxious to maintain support for our British allies as we entered World War I on their side, Wilson did not want us reliving that history by showing them in an unfavorable light. It was perfectly true, of course, but exposing it at that critical time when the President was already facing an uphill battle to muster enthusiasm for the war might undermine America’s willingness to sacrifice so many lives and resources in their defense. The motion picture was seized by the government and Goldstein was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making it.

     Then there was the case against the Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society President and creator of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Joseph Franklin Rutherford. After publishing their anti-war book, “The Finished Mystery”, which was banned in Canada in 1918, Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory had Rutherford and seven other associates arrested and sentenced to 20 years for each of four charges including sedition and distributing anti-government writings, to be served concurrently in Federal Prison in Atlanta.

     There was a feeble attempt to overturn the Espionage Act in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1919. In Schenck vs. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Espionage Act did not violate free speech. Of course it did. In fact, that was the main purpose of the law.

     Probably the most famous and most significant abuse of the Espionage Act was when President Nixon used it against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the truth about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War with his release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. He was tried under the Act and although he was never acquitted, he was released after the judge criticized the Government’s handling of the evidence and ordered a mistrial. Following that disappointing outcome, the Nixon administration attempted to get the Supreme Court to give them the authority to restrain the press, but they refused to go that far.

     By the 1980’s Ronald Reagan went wild with this unbridled power in his evil hands. In 1984 Samuel Long Morison became the first person convicted under the Espionage Act for giving classified information to the press. Wilson’s dream was finally realized. Reagan didn’t distinguish between giving secrets exposing an enemy- in this case the U.S.S.R.- or an ally. He just wanted the same power Wilson and Nixon wanted, which was to restrict the press from being able to expose any government lies or secrets. Learning from what happened former President Nixon, his CIA director William Casey insisted they prosecute the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, Time, and Newsweek, just in case they had any inclination to embarrass the Government  again, as in the Ellsberg case.

     In 1989 Congressman James Traficant and Senator Arlen Spector introduced legislation that would have affected this bill. But not to eliminate it or even curtail it. They pushed an agenda to expand the Espionage Act to include the death penalty for dissent. That wasn’t enough for California Representative Robert Dornan who, in 1994, proposed the death penalty for just disclosing the identity of a U.S. Agent. For some strange reason that standard didn’t apply to Vice President Dick Cheney or that snake posing as a newsman, Robert Novak, who exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in 2003. At least that would have been a legitimate test case.

      You’re probably asking yourself how long it took for Congress to repeal this horrible violation of our most basic civil rights. The answer is we’re still waiting. The abuses and constitutional rights violations under the Espionage Act, in effect since 1917, pales in comparison to the treason under George W. Bush’s eight years in office. But if you think that it finally came to an end with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, you’re sadly mistaken. President Obama, being the true team player that he is, took that ball and ran with it. He is on the verge of surpassing Bush in his vendetta against government whistleblowers, and the Espionage Act is his new best friend. The only reason Bush didn’t put more government enemies in jail was because he ran out of time. President Obama is in real danger of running out of pens.

     As early as 2000, Thomas Andrew Drake was a National Security Agency operative who tried to blow the whistle on the NSA’s Trailblazer program. Envisioned back in 2000, before President Bush’s election, it was a program that was invented to give the NSA more broadening powers to collect intelligence by violating the Fourth Amendment. But it was under President Bush that the project took off on a whole new trajectory with a much broader scope. He expanded it to allow the NSA to spy on Americans by intercepting cell phone calls and internet communications. By 2003 it was over $1 billion in the hole and considered a complete failure, not to mention a violation of American citizens’ civil rights. This began a seven year campaign by the FBI to discredit Drake and help the Government build a case of espionage against him. In 2010, under the new President who ran on a promise to support whistleblowers, they succeeded. Drake was finally indicted under the Espionage Act.

     Also in 2010, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim was indicted under the Act for releasing State Department documents showing North Korea’s plans to explode a nuclear weapon. The White House was more concerned with protecting the status quo on the Korean peninsula than alarming us over something we have no control over. Contrary to the buildup to the Iraq war, where it was our moral imperative to prevent Saddam Hussein from getting nukes, we had no intention of creating false hopes that we could ever prevent Kim jong-Il from getting his hands on them.

     And then there’s the case of Bradley Manning, the Army private sitting in prison awaiting Court Martial for exposing the murder of civilians and reporters by U.S. soldiers in Iraq. He passed the secret video footage showing the massacre to Julian Assange and Wikileaks, who is also being hunted down by the Obama White House.

     In 2011, Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, a former CIA agent, was indicted under the Act for passing information to a New York Times reporter about a failed CIA plot to attack Iran back in the 1990’s.

     The first U.S. Government official credited with exposing the Bush administration’s use of torture by waterboarding was a CIA operative named John Kiriakou. This man should be honored as a national hero. Instead he was just indicted this past January by the Obama White House, for endangering the reputation of President Bush who authorized the use of torture.

     So let’s get this straight. Bush gets a free pass for committing treason from President Obama and the whistleblower who exposes the treason goes to prison? How is that even possible? You can thank President Woodrow Wilson and the Espionage Act of 1917.  

 

• Pakistan grabs a Bin Laden:

     The government of Pakistan is bringing new meaning to the term, “Closing the barn door after the horses get out”. Osama Bin Laden lived for nine of the last 12 years in Pakistan, traveling in and out of the country at will with his WMD’s, his blueprints for more terrorist attacks, and his many wives in tow, in full view of the Pakistani authorities. All this hiding in plain sight was going on right under their noses while the United States was paying them billions to keep their noses up to sniff out his whereabouts. Now that he’s been tracked down and killed by American forces, with no help from our allies in Islamabad, the Pakistani’s have been tripping over themselves trying to figure out what the hell happened while they cover their own tracks in their complicity as to how it happened.

     Working on the premise of better late than never, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, has been cracking down on anyone named Bin Laden since May, with most of their focus directed on his wives. Three of them have been sentenced to prison and fines for entering the country illegally after 9/11, with deportation proceedings to follow. Considering the power and influence their infamous husband had in the Islamic world, you have to wonder what choice they actually had in their living arrangements for the past decade.

     Osama was able to reside in his secret hideaways within Pakistan for years while he plotted to kill more Americans, and the ISI couldn’t come up with a single reason to disrupt his activities. Yet when Bin Laden was caught and killed by an American strike force without ISI’s knowledge, they were the ones caught with their pants down, and they didn’t like it one bit. So they swooped in like vultures to nail his surviving wives on immigration violations. Their interpretation of the war on terror is a little different than what you’d expect. Something must be getting lost in translation.

     If they’re lucky, former President George Herbert Walker Bush will drop in by parachute and rescue them from their fate, just as he did on the morning of 9/11. The Bush’s and Osama Bin Laden’s brother and his family were all enjoying a nice room service breakfast together at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., as they watched the twin towers collapsing on television. Bush Sr. made a phone call to his son and insisted he make an exception to the no-fly moratorium all over the country that day and whisk the Bin Ladens out of the country before the FBI got a chance to question them. He didn’t want somebody (like the future Governor of Alaska, for example?) accusing him of pal-ing around with terrorists.

 

• Revisiting the Falklands:

     There’s an anniversary this week in South America. The war to take back the Falkland Islands from British rule took place 30 years ago. It was more like a war exercise than an actual war. They used to say that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Not sure why that’s something to be proud of, but it’s what the British lived for. The only claim they can cling to now is that the sun never sets on the Rupert Murdoch Empire.

     This short war made international news three decades ago even though most people had never even heard of the Falkland Islands. Suddenly they were front page news for all of two months while England bombed them back into submission. It was seen as a tremendous victory for Great Britain’s Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the only woman who could beat Ronald Reagan in arm wrestling. She was a national hero for maintaining control of this tiny spit of islands that had no purpose to England other than to show the world they were still relevant. She was tired of constantly having to lift up her skirt just to prove to Parliament she had balls.

     From the first time the uninhabited islands were first sighted by Europeans in 1600, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, and the British took turns planting their flags on the deserted beaches. By 1833, Great Britain, the big dog in this fight, took the bone away from the others and claimed it for herself. The Falklands served as a strategic naval installation in World War I and II. It lies at the southern most point of the Atlantic/Pacific intersection known as Cape Horn off the tip of South America.

     Nobody seemed to care one way or another about them except Argentina who went before the newly formed United Nations in 1945 to present their rightful claim to the islands 250 miles off their shores. They were rebuffed by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 502, backed by the United States, which came down on the side of Britain. Great Britain saw their empire dwindling and they were desperate to maintain control over one of their last remaining colonial conquests in the world. The Security Council was happy to oblige.

     It’s sad really. If the United Nations Security Council had that same kind of concern for the welfare of Syrians, and they acted with the same swiftness and authority towards the Syrian massacre for the last year that they did towards the dilemma of letting possession of the Falklands slip away from the British Empire, 10,000 Syrian civilians, slaughtered at the hands of their government this past year, would still be alive.

     Today there are protests still going on in Argentina over the fight for Falkland Islands sovereignty. This is one of the last gasps of breath left in the British Empire and they’re determined to hold onto them, if only to prove that they still matter. The rest of the world had already figured out that they don’t anymore. Basically, Great Britain has been reduced to being America’s loyal houseboy.

 

• It’s 1996 all over again:

     What an odd set of circumstances we’re presented with in this pending Presidential election? The Democratic incumbent, still trying to recover from a devastating debacle in the mid-terms, is despised by the right-wing of the Republican Party who will do whatever it takes to defeat him. And the Republicans are rallying behind a candidate they know is destined to lose but they feel obligated to award with the nomination anyway just because it’s his turn. If there’s something strangely familiar about all this, that’s because we’ve been down this road before. Welcome to Clinton v. Dole, 1996.

     The animosity towards Bill Clinton had him spending more time battling Congress than getting anything done in his first term. By the time the election rolled around he was facing an uphill battle to save his Presidency. Meanwhile the Republicans spent nearly four years obsessed with getting an opportunity to defeat Bill Clinton only to throw it all away by pulling Bob Dole out of mothballs. He was a sure loser but he paid his dues and deserved this anyway.

     Well here we are, it’s 2012, and the same set of circumstances are in motion here. The stubborn arrogance of the Republican Congress and their refusal to allow a single thing to get done in the hopes that it will help defeat Obama in his re-election has left the country floundering for the past three years. And it’s worked. Congress hasn’t even passed a budget in three years.

     President Obama is not blameless here. His ineffectualness and pandering to the far right in a lame attempt to make peace has made him a first term lame duck President. That isn’t supposed to happen until the second term. But wait until next year. Obama couldn’t’ accomplish anything when he was red hot with a Democratic majority. If the Democrats lose the Senate, which is not beyond the realm of possibility, we’ll have 4 more years of antagonism and infighting while the nation sinks further into madness. The Republicans in Congress will sit back and read the newspaper for the remainder of his term, because nobody is screaming for the insanity to stop.

     Mitt Romney points to the anarchy and chaos in Congress and says he can do better by returning to the glorious days of the Bush years. Barack Obama points to the anarchy and chaos in Congress and says that unless we want to return to the Bush years, he deserves another term. They’re both wrong.

 

• An Easter Story:

     One of the great mysteries of Christianity surfaces around this time every year. It’s time to relive the brutal death and miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ, commonly known as Easter. That’s what the celebration is all about. Contrary to popular belief, Easter is not only about chocolate bunnies and hard boiled eggs, tinted with food coloring and vinegar, hidden in a pair of slippers. To Christians this is one of their most sacred holidays, as it represents the basis for their entire faith. It was the moment when Christ died on the cross and returned from the dead three days later. All of Christianity is built around this monumentous occasion, because it gives them all the proof they need to confirm that Christ was the son of God. But maybe there is a simple explanation for such a phenomenon that Church doctrine overlooks.

     Crucifixion was a common form of punishment used by the Romans 2,012 years ago against Jews, thieves, and other odd assortments of sinners and undesirables. Besides the visual impact this kind of public condemnation had, it provided a slow and painful death to enemies of the empire. But just being nailed to a cross, as horrible as that is to contemplate, was not, in itself, enough trauma to the human body to cause someone’s death. When prisoners were crucified they died from the suffocation that was brought about by a simple but cruel technique of breaking their kneecaps. This is what caused the body to be unable to support itself for very long, and the sheer weight caused the lungs to collapse into themselves resulting in death. For some reason that is unknown to historians and religious scholars, the Romans broke tradition by not breaking Jesus Christ’s knees as was the custom. After three days on the cross, when anyone else would have succumbed to lack of oxygen caused by their lungs being crushed under their own weight, Jesus apparently was revived. Could this have something to do with the miracle known as resurrection?  

      Before I get bombarded with accusations of blasphemy by a mob of angry religious zealots, let me state that this is pure speculation on my part. I certainly don’t want to be struck by lightning or swarmed by locusts, and I’d hate to be cornered in a dark alley by a gang of Jesuits armed with very sharp Eucharists. I’m just a harmless atheist with a common sense interpretation of an event that blinds the sensibilities of Catholics who are bound by the teachings of their faith and forbidden to look at things objectively.

      It’s not hard to fathom why it would be in the best interests of first century entrepreneurs looking to build a brand new religious empire back in the year 1 A.D., to want to build this whole aura of divine intervention surrounding the death and resurrection of a Jewish carpenter claiming to be the Son of God. By turning the ignorant misinterpretation of a simple murder at the hands of Roman Centurions into a selfless sacrifice for all our sins into eternity, they conceived the birth of the richest most powerful religious institution the world will ever know.

     Where bunny rabbits, chocolate, and egg hunts enter into the equation is beyond even my comprehension. Prophets and theologians a lot smarter than me will have to sort that one out. All I do know is that the Vatican owes all their billions of dollars they’ve looted over the last 20 centuries to the best thing that ever happened to them. The fifth Prefect of Judaea named Pontius Pilate. Little did he know that when he nailed a Hebrew and two thieves to the cross that day, he set in motion the beginnings of the biggest money-making con-game in history. Their most successful trick was convincing millions of disciples that it was all the fault of the Jews.

 

• Levi strikes again:

     The idea that they love their guns up there in Wasilla, Alaska is now more apparent than ever. It seems that Levi Johnston can’t seem to keep his gun in the holster. Not satisfied with his 15 minutes he’s already enjoyed, he wants another shot. And since his only claim to fame is that he managed to get a local girl pregnant, he’s sticking to what works. He may have to stick with this one through the entire nine months this time, unless a miracle happens and this latest conquest can convince her mother to run for Governor.

     She’s a 20-year old teacher named Sunny and, true to her name, she has brightened Levi’s otherwise mundane life now that his phony engagement/break-up/engagement/break-up with Bristol Palin is now history. Levi’s gravy train is back in the station and nobody gives a shit anymore. Why they ever did is still a mystery. There’s nothing left in that saga for him to milk dry, so he’s moved on to another tabloid headline that’s been his life since 2008, confidently ignoring the theory that lighting never strikes twice.

     As for his latest in what Bristol herself calls a long line of condom-free one-night stands, Sunny is planning to quit teaching, and start her own consulting company while she writes her memoirs, living up to the motto, bend the iron while it’s hot.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

April 6^th, 2012

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 6, Issue 13 

March 24^th- March 30^th, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• They’re off to see the Wizard: Dick Cheney’s trip to the Emerald City
• A fair trial: Even George Zimmerman and Robert Bales deserves one
• Father knows best: Pope Benedict XVI saves Mexico
• The Affordable Health Care Activism: The Supreme Court has a tea party
• Newt Gingrich can’t add: The dream is alive and so is the fantasy

 

• They’re off to see the Wizard:

     Dorothy and the Scarecrow were meandering down the yellow brick road one bright sunny day when they came upon something rather peculiar. There under an apple tree was the former Vice-President of the United States, Dick Cheney. He was standing there with some kind of tin funnel on his head, stiff as a waterboard, and mumbling something they couldn’t quite make out. At first they stared at each other in total bewilderment because it sounded like he said “bomb Iran” which had no meaning to either one of them. They eventually figured out that he was asking for the oilcan. They all had a good laugh as they lubed him up and proceeded to tell him the tale of how they wound up on the yellow brick road in the first place, and the strange series of events that set them on their journey to Oz.

     Dorothy was all excited over the prospect of meeting the Wonderful Wizard. The Munchkins swore he was the man to see when you needed a designated driver. The Scarecrow chimed in that he needed a brain. The old farmer who made him said his family was five generation Republicans and they all did just fine without one. Low and behold, Dick the Tinman Cheney cried out that he desperately needed something too- a heart, and he begged them to take him along. So, off they went and, well, you know the rest.

     For Dick Cheney, Falls Church, Virginia, is his “Emerald City” and his Wizard is the Administrator at the Inova Fairfax Hospital who made the decision that Cheney deserves to jump to the head of the line for a heart transplant. Maybe the fact that he never had one before had something to do with it. Who knows?

     But seriously, how the hell did Lucifer himself earn the right to climb over the 3,100 other people on the heart transplant waiting list? Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that he’s 71 years old, and his odds of survival are less than five years while 330 people will die this year waiting for that spot. He’s also on another list. He’s a fugitive wanted for international war crimes and he’s guilty of treason. Hey, don’t take my word for it. He brags about it all the time on his book signing tours and his many appearances on Fox News and “American Idol”. I know that the life and death decisions that are made on who gets a transplant and who doesn’t are supposed to be non-biased and needs-based, but come on. Are we really supposed to believe that money and influence has nothing to do with the decision to grant a new heart to a man who is usually the one crushing them? Yeah, right.

     The Cheney family says they are grateful to the anonymous donor for giving Cheney a new lease on life, even though he is responsible for cutting short thousands of other people’s. The donor’s name was not revealed, but there’s rumors floating around that Dick Cheney shot him while out on a hunting trip and ripped his beating heart right out of his chest. The victim survived and is now number 3,101 on the transplant waiting list. He must be a real patriot.

 

• A fair trial:

     There are two things we now know for sure about the fate of Sergeant Bales and George Zimmerman. They’re both guilty of murder, and neither one can ever get a fair trial. The difference is that Robert Bales will spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed for his crime anyway, and Zimmerman will go free. You have to have a strong commitment to our Constitution and the rule of law to accept the fact that if there is no chance of a fair trial, they both must go free. If your anger negates this principle, it’s misguided. Your anger should be directed at who is responsible for this miscarriage of justice.

     Thanks to the total disregard of the law and the Constitution by our current and former Presidents, we no longer care about fair trials. We’ve been reduced to a society that is willing to abdicate our civic responsibility because all we want is for someone to make the decision for us. The less involvement on our part the better. As long as the result makes us feel safe, that’ all we care about these days.

     If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Bush, and now the Obama Administrations, it’s that violating the Constitution in defense of politics is no vice. In fact, throwing out annoying articles of the Constitution that get in the way of public confidence has become a necessary evil in defense of pretending to uphold it. In Sergeant Bales case it means throwing him to the wolves to avoid a bigger war than the one we’re already engaged in, when what he really needs is time in a psychiatric ward, not a prison. As for George Zimmerman, the media outcry and demonstrations for his arrest and conviction may very well be justified, but two pieces of that puzzle are missing. The forensic evidence and the possibility of finding an impartial jury. The question in both cases is who else is at fault here?

     First take the murder of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman that is poisoned now. Thanks to the incompetence, the blind rush to judgment, and the blatant racism of the Sanford Police Department, the forensic evidence needed to formulate a case against the shooter, George Zimmerman, went home with him that very night and is lost forever. Add to that the media circus that has erupted around this case and the public conviction that has already been handed down, deserved or not, and Zimmerman’s lawyer, unless he’s an incompetent fool, should have no problem getting his client acquitted. We all know that Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin in cold blood. But between the NRA-sponsored “Stand your ground” law and the bungling of the investigation by the Police, there is no other recourse now. We cannot lynch George Zimmerman to satisfy an angry mob. Thanks to his racial profiling, the rampant racism in the Sanford Police Department and the District Attorney’s office, and this outrageous law that’ nothing but a gift to the gun lobby, our system of justice has completely collapsed into chaos, and this animal may have to walk because of it.

     As shocking as this may sound, the ugly truth is that the Sanford Police and the State of Florida will now have to do a much better job of protecting George Zimmerman from violence than they did protecting Trayvon Martin.

     And now the Afghan massacre and the American military’s open wound known as Sergeant Bales. The tragedy of that story is that while Bales is being charged with 17 murders, there are still three victims no one is talking about. Kari Bales and her two children. Robert Bales not only faces the loss of his life, but his family now loses a husband and father, not to mention his pension and benefits, when the U.S. Government is the party responsible for his mental breakdown, which is clearly what this was.

     Let’s be honest here. Bales is a dead man walking. There is no way in Hell we can save this man and provide the medical help he needs now, when we weren’t there to provide it when he needed it, long before that dreadful night. Diplomacy will never let that happen. These wars, and our politicians from the President on down who are allowing them to go on, are responsible for the tragedies that result. The soldiers who are forced to endure situations no human being should be expected to survive, especially with their mental faculties intact, cannot be held responsible for their actions when they eventually suffer psychotic episodes. Our Military-Industrial Complex is. When Bales is sentenced to life in prison or executed before a firing squad and his family is destroyed, the Afghan people will not feel any less hate for us and why should they? The lions in this den are Presidents Obama and Karzai. Sergeant Bales, and all the other soldiers who lose their way as they lose their minds, are merely sacrificial lambs here. Tossing them into the arena is more for the benefit of those political leaders than it is for all the victims in these crimes.

     In a desperate attempt to hide from this shocking truth, the President, in a mad rush to put out the fires causes by this slaughter at the hands of an American soldier on the heels of the Koran burning controversy, has decided to participate in an ancient Afghan custom of paying blood money for wrongful death as a show of respect between tribes. The United States has already made restitution payments to the victims families in Afghanistan (funny how fast the wheels turn when diplomatic priorities are at stake). Singling out these victims of American military policy gone horribly wrong from all the others we have inadvertently killed and maimed, we are (unofficially of course- we’ll deny it if asked) paying off the families of this massacre to the tune of $50,000 for each dead victim and $11,000 for each injured survivor. In a country where the average annual income is $425, this must be considered a small fortune, but how can there ever be a true value placed on a human life, especially an innocent child’s? But what happens to Bales’ family? And what about the thousands of families here, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq that have suffered injustice and loss at the hands of the U.S. Government? Should we pay them all? Actually, yes, but we won’t because we don’t have to. We only pay to keep politicians from feeling uncomfortable.

     If this is the magic number that the Obama Administration has come up, then so be it. But what about the thousands of other victims of our bombings, our accidental drone attacks, and our torture and illegal detention, all just as innocent, and in many cases just as dead?

     And what about the other forgotten victims of this war- the returning veterans doing the fighting, the suffering, and the dying for a political cause that has nothing to do with the freedom and security of this country? Soldiers can’t get the proper armored vehicles and body armor, and wounded vets and their families can’t get the proper medical care and fair compensation they need and deserve because we don’t have the budget for it. But we found the money, almost overnight, to make this payoff, just to avoid a full-scale uprising that would have reined more bloodshed upon Americans in service than we’ve already caused? We could avoid it simply by bringing everybody home and ending the bloodshed altogether.

     If you took the $1 trillion-plus dollars we’ve spent on this war, and just divided it up between every American and Afghan citizen, and forget about the fighting, the suffering, and the dying, we’d all be much better off. 

 

• Father knows best:

     Back in 1519 there was no such thing as Christianity in Mexico. Not yet, anyway. The native Indians were getting along just fine for thousands of years worshiping their own Gods of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and the Margarita. Shows how ignorant they were. Little did they know that they were worshiping the wrong God. It wasn’t until Cortez landed on their shores with a small band of soldiers, slaves, and strict instructions from the Queen of Spain to capitalize on the great success of Christopher Columbus, that these lost souls were finally set straight on who the one true God was, Jesus Christ. Of course when he wasn’t too busy slaughtering the natives as he showed them the light, he also was ordered by the Queen to use any means necessary to grab up all that gold she heard so much about.

     It took some effort on the part of those well-meaning Disciples of Christ to bring these reluctant sinners around, but you’d be amazed what a little rape, torture, and genocide can accomplish. The Jesuits soon followed bringing their own brand of brutality and bloodshed. They were more than willing to do whatever it took to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the stubborn natives who were still clinging to their arts and crafts and their religion. The Jesuits were famous for their advanced techniques in religious indoctrination and mind control that went beyond anything Columbus ever thought of by leaps and bounds, and he was considered the master of sadistic re-education of indigenous people.

     Cortez was eventually able to con his way into Tenochtitlan, the capital city of what was at the time the greatest empire that ever existed in this New World (that somebody just up and found), by cleverly disguising himself as Queztalcoatl, the legendary Aztec God whose return was foretold to them in legend, and with great expectations. Once those main gates were breached it only took the Spaniards two years of looting, burning, and blood letting with some occasional Bible reading in between to close the deal. Once the Aztec Empire fell, and the indigenous population was wiped out thanks to smallpox, enslavement, and centuries of religious crusades of slaughter, Mexico was finally consumed into the Christian family of nations. One Aztec peasant girl, whose body and soul was saved from the point of a Spanish sword by a vision of the Virgin Mary, became the patron saint of the Americas. The shrine built in her honor, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, stands to this day as a testament to her faith, or her good fortune, depending on how you look at it.

     Today, as Mexico remains continuously swept up in the corrupt and violent wars between the drug cartels and the Mexican government that has claimed the lives of 50,000 people since 2006, their despair has finally been answered by a visit from the leader of the same Catholic Church that destroyed their culture and their country more than 500 years earlier. Pope Benedict XVI took time out from his busy schedule finding new homes for pedophiles, to travel to Mexico and offer an answer to their prayers. He told them exactly what they needed to hear- his voice as a conduit to God- and what they needed to do to achieve salvation- more praying.

     To prove his solidarity with the Mexican people in their struggle to free themselves from the unending bloodshed, he donned a sombrero and drove through the streets in his Pope-mobile yelling “Ondele’, amigos”. The drug lords threw down their weapons and began hugging each other in the streets. They promised to throw away all their narcotics, with a solid commitment to plow over all the marijuana and poppy fields and plant only beans and yucca instead. Then they all pledged to only do God’s work from then on. Tears flowed like a river.

     When asked what exactly turned them around, they all agreed it was the warm, reassuring message from the Pope asking them to look deep into their human hearts and renew their faith to Christ to get them through these troubling times. In the words of the Holy Father, “At this time, when so many families are separated or forced to emigrate, when so many are suffering due to poverty, corruption, domestic violence, drug trafficking, the crisis of values and increased crime, we come to Mary in search of consolation, strength and hope.” All the millions of dollars spent and the thousands of lives lost in the war on drugs, and it turns out all they had to do was pray to the Virgin Mary? Who knew?

     One powerful drug kingpin lamented while wiping a tear off his cheek with a rolled up $100 dollar bill, that if there’s one thing he’s learned from watching vintage American TV shows in syndication, it’s that Father knows best. The crowd concurred as a million hats flew through the air in celebration.

 

• The Affordable Health Care Activism:

     Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, and Dennis Kucinich were among the few handful of progressives in the Democratic Party with the guts to tell the truth in the final moments of the charade known as the healthcare reform debate one year ago. They felt so strongly about the weakness of the final plan which was written by the Insurance industry to serve their own interests, that they threatened to vote against it, and for good reason. It was garbage. While it was true that this country desperately needed and wanted health care reform, when they elected Barack Obama they wanted him to take charge of getting this job done. In the end he assumed we just wanted something-anything- that looked like a step forward, no matter how bad it really was.

     So the Affordable Health Care Act was born. And not a moment too soon. If there was one thing we needed more than anything else in this country, it was affordable healthcare. What we didn’t need was a hollowed out representation of what we hoped a heathcare reform bill would look like. This idea that any bill is better than no bill at all is totally wrong. What we are experiencing now is the fallout of that absurd logic.

     For that brief shining moment we almost had a few patriots brave enough to stand up for what’s right and say out loud that this was a sellout to the insurance companies and a betrayal to what the people deserved. But the flame was blown out of that candle quickly enough. I had hoped that one of these men or somebody in the Democratic Party would have the courage to not just speak the words as they did, but act responsibly by putting their vote where their mouth was. But as usual, political arm twisting and pressure from above, meaning the White House, prevailed and the watered down shell of a reform bill that had no resemblance to it’s former self was passed. Had the White House put that kind of pressure, in fact any pressure at all, on Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and the rest of the so-called Blue Dogs, the bill would have passed with at least some meat on the bone.

     Instead we were stuck with the two worst things about it- the lack of a public option which was  D.O.A. because President Obama refused to fight for it, and the concession to the insurance companies to hold off implementation of the heart and soul of the bill until 2014. This single act was a double-edged sword. It was an act of compromise to the Republican Party and an act of submission to the insurance lobby because it gave them all the time they needed to milk the current system dry by sucking as many rate hikes and benefit reductions as they could out of it while they organized their battle strategy to repeal the bill.

     It is in my opinion these two serious deficiencies in this weak excuse for a reform law that lay at the root cause of why the fate of the bill is in limbo and at great risk of being gutted beyond any ability to salvage it now. The American people lack the imagination to even comprehend what benefits they will receive three years into the future and they don’t have the attention span to wait for someone to enlighten them. If this new healthcare law had the public option, which would have meant universal coverage for at least 95% of the uninsured (it should have been 100%, but we can’t expect miracles the first time out of the gate), and if it had kicked in immediately, there is no way in Hell the American people would stand for any attempt to repeal it. This represents what I consider to be one of the greatest of the many weaknesses of the Obama presidency. His eagerness to compromise to get something done outweighs his commitment to stand his ground on what needs to be done. The political victory, even if it’s short term, is more important than real ground-breaking results. Sure he meant well when he started, but President Obama’s road to a second term is paved with good intentions.

     And now, instead of heading into its second year of operation, the Affordable Care Act is headed for a premature death before the Supreme Court as we speak. For the first time in history they have agreed to hear arguments in a lawsuit claiming damages that haven’t happened yet and won’t even exist until the year after the full extent of the law kicks in- after April 15^th, 2015.

     Republicans could have just waited until next January when Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum or anyone else they nominate in August is sworn in on January 20^th, 2013. Then he could pole vault from the swearing in ceremony right over the balcony into the Oval Office to sign the repeal of the whole damn thing like they’re all promising. But I guess they aren’t as confident about their chances of taking back the White House as they appear. So they’re hedging their bets by turning to the one arm of the Government that has served them quite well, The U.S. Supreme Court. Ever since the trouncing of the Constitution in 2000 when they sidestepped the entire electoral process and anointed a King of their own choosing- George W. Bush- the Supreme Court has been a good friend and servant to the Republican Party.

     The worst part of this scandal involving a Supreme Court worming its way into a situation that they have no business getting involved with, is that the two most right-wing Justice’s, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, have not only publicly voiced their opposition to Obama-care but have been paid to speak at Koch brothers’ pep rallies to cheerlead that opposition. That is no different than taking a bribe to buy their votes. Thomas’ wife even runs a lobbying firm that devotes all it’s time and energy fighting Obama-care, using her personal influence on the United States Supreme Court as leverage.

     We all know how corrupt the new Supreme Court really is so that’s not all that shocking. The question is why haven’t these two scoundrels been forced to recuse themselves from this case? That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. The answer is it would mean someone in the Congress would have to follow the law and demand it. But they are the law. The Highest Law in the land. Isn’t that how we’re supposed to refer to them? They’re America’s royalty. You can tell because they’re the only ones in government allowed to wear bathrobes to work.

     The truth is if this case is allowed to continue, with all nine Justices intact, including the most corrupt and influential of the bunch, Scalia and Thomas, it will confirm what we’ve all known for the last 12 years unless you live under the same rock that Newt Gingrich does. The modern day Supreme Court is bought and paid for by the Republican Party, and they have been carrying their water since 2000.

     The challenge to the law is fundamentally simple. It’s also fundamentally stupid, but it is, after all, the Tea Party that’s driving this bus. They’ve managed to reduce the specious argument down to the two things necessary to sell it to the average American who can’t operate on any other level. First, they’re claiming that the mandate gives the Government the power to force everyone to buy a product against their will. And second, since the enforcement of the violation for not purchasing it is in the hands of the IRS who will garnish it from your tax return, they’re calling it a tax. Talk about two birds with one stone. This cleverly targets the two things in the whole world the Tea Party hates almost as much as they hate Barack Obama. Being told what to do by anyone but God, and having to pay taxes. It’s a win-win for Republicans.

     Technically they’re right on both counts. But it’s not the truth that’s the problem here. It’s the weakness of the Democrats for spending so much time and effort selling the concept of healthcare reform but failing miserably in trying to explain it. The concept of how it’s supposed to work and why it will pay for itself with the mandate that everyone must participate in, is not that difficult to understand. This is what will ultimately bring down the high cost of medical care and make it affordable as the name implies. Anyone with any intelligence could figure this out.

     Especially Republicans, who supported the mandate until it became a cornerstone of Obama-care. They can afford to be liars and hypocrites by ignoring that fact and scaring their constituency with falsehoods. They don’t have to tell the truth to get their agenda passed. Democrats don’t have that luxury. So instead of common sense and simple logic, the details get lost in the scuffle of worrying about who might not like the idea. This is a disastrous approach to take if you’re going to win over a reluctant audience who normally gets all its information from commercials on television.

     This represents why the Republicans have done a much better job selling their lies than Democrats have selling the truth. Because Democrats are afraid to tell the truth. But what’s so wrong with it? Republicans are fear-mongering, and quite successfully, over this notion that the Government is making us do something. Since when is that a shock? The Democrats are so afraid of acknowledging that this is how it must be, they’re running from it like the plague instead of telling it like it is.

     The Government makes us do stuff all the time, in every aspect of our lives. Some of it is pure theft, plain and simple, but some of it really is for the common good. We all have to buy auto insurance. We have to pay accountants to file our taxes every year. We get FICA and Medicare deducted from our paychecks along with all the other federal taxes that are taken against our wishes to pay for all kinds of programs we may not necessarily agree with. We pay sales taxes and property taxes to support our roads, our police and fire departments, and the public schools. It’s the Government that makes us do all these things because we all know that if there wasn’t that mandate to do it, rich people and short-sighted young people who couldn’t care less would refuse to participate. But isn’t that the whole point here? Isn’t this where we’ve been headed since the election of Ronald Reagan? The privatization of the entire U.S. Government and the destruction of the middle class along with it? They’ve been waiting for this opportunity for 32 years, and this is the moment where Republicans have drawn the line.

     Creating a fair and viable system for providing health and medical needs of all Americans regardless of ability to pay, and letting us catch up to the rest of the industrialized world has been a long time coming. Not only is it the humane thing to do, it’s the most beneficial thing we could possibly do for the economy. But once it became Barack Obama’s agenda it was doomed. That’s because providing care and comfort to not only underprivileged children, the poor, and the elderly, but all Americans is not a Tea Party agenda. The greatest irony in all this bullshit is that they are linking this struggle into the greater battle they are calling the Democratic war on religion. If the Democrats had any brains, they’d be on the offensive with the counterattack by asking them this fundamental question: What would Jesus do?  

     Now the Supreme Court has been asked by a handful of right-wing Republican Governors and other Tea Party zealots to overturn a legitimate law, written by an Administration with a mandate to do it, and passed, albeit with concessions and compromises, by both Houses of Congress, on the pretense that the American people don’t like it. On its face that claim is pure bullshit. There is absolutely no evidence to back that up. To suggest that the majority of Americans have somehow made a complete 180 on the issue is ridiculous. Besides how can the American people not like something they have not even had the opportunity to fully appreciate yet? There’s only one answer to that question. The Tea Party pundits are trying their damndest to make people believe it, and it’s working.     

     But like I’ve said many times before, this is the Democrats fault and it lies at the feet of Barack Obama. He’s the leader of the Party and he did not lead. He delegated, and there’s a significant difference. They were able to push through the mandate which said everyone had to buy an insurance policy because it was what the insurance lobby wanted most. But they refused to fight for the competitive public option which is what the people wanted but the insurance lobby definitely did not. Without the public option as a counter balance the mandate is worthless. Add to that, this stupid compromise they made in the end to give the insurance companies three years to get their affairs while their lawyers and lobbyists have enough time to bribe and coerce the necessary politicians to destroy it. Their ship has just come in.

     By achieving both these goals, they have quite successfully laid the groundwork for the possibility that the right-wing Supreme Court will do the Tea Party’s bidding once again by throwing out the mandate, thereby trashing the entire bill before it even comes to life. Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t the Republican Party asking the Supreme Court to perform an abortion on the bill before it’s born? Who’d have ever thought we’d see the day when the Republicans would actually be taking a pro-choice position on anything? This may be a black cloud over Washington, D.C., but at least there’s a silver lining in there somewhere.

 

• Newt Gingrich can’t add:

     If we elected our Presidents based solely on their tenacity, stubbornness, and ability to escape reality, we would just cancel the election altogether. Newt Gingrich is the man. In spite of the fact that he’s only won two states so far, South Carolina and Georgia, and they happen to be the two states in the union that are still fighting the Civil War, he’s confident that his rather unique approach to the nominating process is sound. He prays every day that Romney will come up short at the convention and in the melee that follows they’ll have to turn to him for salvation. Gingrich never held much stock in the value of prayer before, although he has pretended to believe in its healing powers ever since he converted to Catholicism. At first he found it odd that a religion could be centered on the notion that if you step into a tiny room the size of a phone booth and whisper your sins through a caned mesh to a pervert who gets off listening to them on the other side, you’ll receive absolution and the freedom to sin another day. All he knows is it’s certainly done wonders rescuing his tarnished reputation.

     While Newt Gingrich may be a brilliant historian (we know this because Fannie Mae paid him millions of dollars for his expertise in 18^th century political philosophy) he’s obviously no mathematician. He may be very clever when it comes to hiding his extra-marital affairs or embezzling donations through his self-designated charitable organizations he invented, but he’s a little weak on his addition tables. You see, in Newt Gingrich’s world, two plus two doesn’t necessarily add up to four. Apparently two out of fifty is a comfortable margin he can live with. That glimmer in his eye tells us he knows something we don’t. He’s convinced that once the delegates see just how indefensible a candidate Mitt Romney really is after the first round, they’ll see the light and realize they have no one else to turn to. He may just be right about that. There is a lot of hand-wringing going on at the RNC these days, and that very scenario is their greatest fear.

     Poor Newt. He just got some bad news from his rich benefactor, Sheldon Adelson. In a message sent via a singing telegram he told Newt that he was cutting off his allowance. After giving him more than $16 million dollars he still hasn’t cleaned up his room. The billionaire Las Vegas casino tycoon had such high hopes for his boy, Newt, but he’s backing off because he doesn’t like the odds. No one’s really sure which candidate he’ll invest in now. Adelson doesn’t like to buy off the rack, and he doesn’t think Mitt Romney has got what it takes to be one of his puppets. As for Rick Santorum, he said quite bluntly, “I don’t want him running my country”. Someone had to remind him that it wasn’t his country, but he scoffed and said that’s why he’s backing Republicans. Another couple of right-wing Supreme Court Justices under those robes and it would have been.

     They say Gingrich took the news pretty hard. He thought the Alter Boy was giving him a Holy Sacrament until he burst into song. Newt broke down right there in Church. They had to play “Dancing Queen” on the pipe organ just to console him. His aides tried calling Sheldon on Newt’s behalf to beg for another chance. Just a few million more and he’ll have Romney right where he wants him- naively comfortable in his commanding lead. That’s when Newt will make his move. But Adelson had already changed his phone number.  

     Being the ultimate optimist that Newt Gingrich is (he was thrown out of the House of Representatives and still believes there’s a welcome home party waiting behind the chamber door) he’s forging ahead anyway. Someone leaked the story that he took the last few hundred dollars he still had left in the campaign treasury and bought a white horse. Calista says he practices strutting in front of the mirror everyday, with a flag pole under one arm and a copy of the New Testament under the other. His hands are held firmly behind his back so nobody can see that he’s got his fingers crossed when he enters the auditorium in Tampa this summer.  

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

March 30^th, 2012

 

 

 

 

“NEWS BULLETS: THIS JUST IN!”

Vol. 6, Issue 12 

March 17^th- March 23^rd, 2012

In the news this week:

 

The highlights:

• Profiles in murder: Vigilante justice, police corruption, and a hoodie
• Too volatile too fail: Pakistan on the verge of a meltdown
• Greed, corruption, and the price of gas: Inflation has nothing to do with it
• Lying his way to the top: He doesn’t know the difference and doesn’t care
• Bristol speaks out: She has nothing to say, but we love to listen anyway

 

• Profiles in murder:

     As the story unfolded this week of what can only be described as an assassination of an unarmed young black teen in Sanford, Florida by a police groupie named George Zimmerman over a month ago and the shockingly incompetent investigation/cover-up by the Sanford Police Department, I can’t help but recall a similar incident of the massive police cover-up following the tragic death of Arthur McDuffie. Those who did not live in South Florida in the early 1980’s may not be aware of the traffic incident that led to the murder of McDuffie at the hands of a mob of out-of-control Miami Police Officers and the trial that led to the worst rioting in the city’s history.

     In 1979, an African American veteran and family man named Arthur McDuffie was speeding on his motorcycle as he often liked to do at 2 a.m. when he thought no one else was on the road. He soon found himself in a high speed police chase through the streets of Liberty City, Miami’s poorest black neighborhood, which lay in the shadows of the downtown skyline of luxury high-rise condos and towering banking centers built with international drug money. Knowing he had outstanding tickets and an expired license, he thought he could out run them. He was wrong, and when he stopped, he put up his hands and said “You got me”.

     He was handcuffed as per proper police procedure, but he was not put under arrest. Instead the officers at the scene decided to hold the trial right then and there in the street, illuminated with newly installed amber anti-crime lighting. He was convicted on the spot, although it was certainly not by a jury of his piers, and subsequently sentenced to death by beating at the hands of the police with night sticks and Magnum police issue flashlights. The weapons of execution were tossed onto the nearest rooftop and his motorcycle was run over with a police cruiser to indicate that McDuffie had crashed his bike, resulting in massive head injuries at his own hand.

     The ensuing Police cover-up and phony investigation eventually led to the arrest and trial of five police officers. When they were acquitted by an all male, all white jury in Tampa, it led to the city’s most violent race riots, the burning and looting on a scale never seen before, and armed National Guard troops stationed on downtown Miami street corners. That haunting image, which I witnessed first hand when I found myself dangerously close to the 8 p.m. M-16 enforced curfew, was more reminiscent of a trip I made to Mexico City rather than what you’d expect to see on any city in America.

    On February 26^th, 2012, a murder took place in another Florida city. Sanford, about 20 miles north/east of Orlando, the tourist destination capital of the world. This murder did not involve a policeman, or even an off duty officer, but a disillusioned vigilante posing as law enforcement under the guise of being a member of an organization known as Neighborhood Watch. So far there is no substantiated evidence that “Officer” Zimmerman, as he wishes we’d call him, was even a real member of Neighborhood Watch, let alone that he has taken the proper training they require, training that would never have allowed him to carry a weapon. So the question of why he ignored what his training should have told him- that he should have notified law enforcement authorities and backed off- is a moot point now. He was not out patrolling for signs of criminal activity. He was out hunting. Instead of simply keeping his eyes and ears open for strange behavior, this lunatic was roaming the streets with a loaded firearm, prowling for black men with the intention of gunning them down before they could even think about committing a crime in his neighborhood. “Those assholes always get away.” His words. He was not going to let that happen on his watch.

     A young teenager named Trayvon Martin was walking down the street on his way home from that bastion of criminal activity, the local 7/11, talking on his cell phone with his girlfriend and sipping an iced tea through a straw, when he crossed paths with the only real criminal out on the street that night, Sanford’s self-appointed guardian angel name George Zimmerman. The bulge in Trayvon’s pocket, which turned out to be a box of skittles, was no match for the bulge in Zimmerman’s pants which turned out to be the hard-on he had for the fame and fortune that was surely going to be awarded him for thwarting a crime in progress by a black man. The ever-threatening hoodie which positively identified him as a gang member (as quantified by the world renowned investigative journalist, Geraldo Rivera whose immense talents and tremendous insight have blown this case wide open) represented a clear and present danger to Mr. Zimmerman and he took the necessary steps to address this obvious menace to society. That chance encounter may have endeared him to the Sanford Police Department by saving them the trouble of having to take care of it themselves, but it cost Trayvon Martin his life.

     As horrendous as this may sound to reasonable human beings, the bigger crime may very well be what happened next. Nothing. Once Zimmerman gave his fabricated re-enactment to members of the Sanford Police Department, it’s become quite clear that they had no interest in wasting any further man-hours investigating what they themselves quickly labeled a clear cut case of self defense based solely on this killer’s account. He was then allowed to stroll on home with his freedom and his pride in tact and his weapon tucked firmly back into his waistband.

     They were apparently so completely satisfied with his statement, that that’s all they took from the shooter in this case. They did not take his weapon, his

bloodied clothes, or a blood sample. In fact, the only blood test for drugs and alcohol that was performed that night was on Trayvon’s dead corpse, left on the cold medical examiner’s table in the morgue, where he laid for three days, toe-tagged as a John Doe. His parents had to file a missing persons report even though the police had Trayvon’s cell phone and could have cleared up the mystery of his identity with a push of a button. They must have figured this was just another unidentified black hoodlum. Who’s gonna bother looking for him anyway?

     When police officers cover-up crimes, hide or tamper with evidence, and refuse to investigate the details of a crime in a responsible way, especially when one of their own is clearly involved, the whole fabric of society breaks down. The situation becomes worse that the original crime. Why this crazed gunman is still walking the streets, armed with the same loaded weapon he used to murder a kid he obviously profiled to a conclusion he didn’t like, is not as big a mystery as you would think. The blame for this hijacking of justice leads us to another issue that should be of greater concern, not only to the citizens of Florida, but to everyone in the nation. It can be placed squarely on the shoulders of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature, including the spineless Democrats who shamefully supported this insane bill known as “Stand Your Ground”.

     They are all guilty of caving to the pressure of a force more powerful than decency and common sense should allow, The NRA, which strong-armed them into passing this bill into law. It’s a perverted version of what used to be called the “Castle Law” where a person can legally shoot a home invader dead in defense of it. The essence of this law says that a citizen in the Sunshine State can stand firmly shoulder to shoulder with anyone they consider inferior to them and fire their weapon solely on the grounds that they felt compelled to do so. That’s exactly what Zimmerman did, and it’s the perception of his full compliance with the law that just may make him what the rest of the country fears most- immune from prosecution. To this day George Zimmerman has still not been charged and may never be if this ridiculous Florida statue known as “Stand Your Ground” is allowed to protect him.

     Adding insult to injury is the cold-blooded response by Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, who must surely be known to his friends as Mr. Jim Crow. Basically he tried to defend the actions of Zimmerman by insinuating that this whole event was at least partially Trayvon’s fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if he could do it over again, he’d probably behave differently. Behave differently? How, by purchasing M&M’s and donning a chef’s hat instead?

     If this sounds too shocking to believe, it should? The question remains, is it sufficient cause for this man to lose his job as chief law enforcement officer in Sanford? We’ll see. That all depends on whether or not local City officials can first save the city from this wormhole they’ve fallen into. It seems that the entire town has disappeared into a crack in the space/time continuum which is causing them to suffer from some kind psychotic break, whereby they think it’s 1950 all over again. What other explanation could there possibly be for this outrageously ignorant and racially explosive response to a murder of a black boy? Or is this country still that racist? Sadly yes.

     We were so mesmerized by the election of a black man for President and foolish enough to think this meant that we really turned the corner on that dark period of our cruel and shameful past, that we lost sight of reality. If we are to learn anything from that dark moment in our history it’s that this is a sad reminder of what an overzealous Police Department is capable of when they get sidetracked into worrying about protecting themselves instead of the citizens in their care. When they start circling the wagons it’s time to start worrying.

     Meanwhile, as this media circus continues, so does the assault on this poor family by the very officials that are supposed to be there to protect them. Statistics clearly show that a black victim of a crime is of far less importance to law enforcement authorities than a white victim, regardless of the race of the perpetrator. And a white criminal gets far less scrutiny, especially against a black victim. This is the reality in America today as it was 150 years ago at the start of the Civil War, and these facts are clearly born out in this case.

     The strongest response the citizens of Sanford have at their disposal is a declaration of ‘no confidence’ against their police chief. There has to be a more powerful statement to be made than that if we are ever going to heal this community and this nation.

 

• Too volatile too fail:

     Some of you might think that the most volatile place on the planet right now is inside the Republican Party. Well, you’d be close considering the vicious attacks being thrown between those vying for the nomination and the direction they want to drag us. They’ve even got some of their own running for cover. But actually it’s someplace even more dangerous to the future of the world than that- Pakistan. The country is in complete turmoil with anti-American religious fanatics engineering this runaway locomotive and it’s about to crash.

     They are apparently so desperately broke, they have nation-wide power outages every day, they are on the brink of a bloody civil war with Islamic Fundamentalists foaming at the mouth to take over the military, and they have nuclear weapons thanks to a huge subsidy from the U.S. taxpayers for more than two decades. They stand third in line behind Israel and Egypt for U.S. foreign aid with most of it going straight into their military budget to offset Indian aggression, and the rest landing in former President Mushareff’s bank account. 

     Pakistan represents the only nation on Earth that gets more American aid the more they show how much they hate us. The only reason the Taliban is still alive and kicking is because President Mushareff gave them safe haven when they were on the verge of extinction after we invaded Afghanistan in 2001. We only invaded supposedly for the sole purpose of wiping them out as pay back for supporting Al Qaeda. Best laid plans of mice and men.

     And even though Pakistan is guilty of giving sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden for over six years while we bribed them to help us hunt him down, the geniuses at the Department of State consider Pakistan too big to fail, and we will have to bail them out regardless. Today, the Taliban is back, fully refreshed, invigorated, and heavily financed, living quite comfortably in Pakistan while they wait out the storm, ready to take back Afghanistan as soon as we pack up and leave.      

     Pakistan was born out of a religious war with Hindu India after their long fight for independence ended in 1948. The ensuing bloodbath between Muslims and Hindus led to decades of war and mistrust. The only thing maintaining the peace has been the United States playing both sides against each other while paying both sides to play nice. Our policy concerning India and Pakistan is that as long as they escalate tensions to the brink of nuclear war every decade or so without crossing that line, we will commit to donating billions of American taxpayer dollars down that rat hole known as Indian/Pakistani diplomacy. Today we are witnessing the collapse of what ever used to pass for a democracy in Pakistan as Islamic revolutionaries stand poised to take over the country and its vast nuclear arsenal as part of their spoils of war. This is by far a greater risk to our security than anything Iran is up to.

     Diplomats, politicians, and think-tank consultants are brainstorming as we speak, calculating and debating what it’s going to take for the United States to prevent that from happening. In other words, how much will it cost us to buy them off? And just in case anybody is really interested, we have already given $20 billion dollars to Pakistan since September 11^th, 2001, to help us fight the phony war on terrorism and the reality is no one knows and no one cares what happened to all that money or what we’ve gotten for our investment. The truth is, it doesn’t matter anymore. We’ll be handing over another $20 billion in the next round.

 

• Greed, corruption, and the price of gas:

     When I first started driving in 1969, gas stations were still full service facilities as well as the places where you got gas. In those days, Sears Automotive Centers had gas pumps and we all started going there to fill up because they were still selling gas at $.29-cents a gallon, while the neighborhood Esso, Mobil, Gulf, Arco, Flying A, and Shell had amazingly crossed the threshold past $.30-cents a gallon. This was baffling to us. Who would ever be willing to pay $.30-cents a gallon for gasoline? We laughed.

     Today there’d be rioting in the streets if a station announced it was selling gas for $3.00 a gallon. The obvious explanation is inflation. After all, everything costs more than it did in the 1970’s, right? Except real wages, in dollar-for-dollar purchasing power, are about the same as they were in the 1970’s. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The price of gasoline is approaching $4.00 a gallon and climbing, but it has nothing to do with inflation. It has to do with greed and corruption on the part of the world’s most profitable monopoly and the stranglehold they have over Washington, D.C., and those whores we affectionately call our political leaders.

     We give Big Oil billions in subsidies so they’ll continue to donate to political campaigns and lobby Congress, but the cold hard fact is they don’t need it and they surely don’t spend it on anything necessary in their industry that would promote or enhance oil and gas production. In fact, the biggest lie politicians get away with is how they’ve convinced Americans that we live in a perpetual state of catastrophe because we are running out of oil and they’ve been milking that dry since the OPEC oil embargos of the 1970’s. The reality is the price of gasoline has nothing to do with stockpiles of oil. It has to do with refineries. Oil storage tanks are full, and there is a worldwide glut of oil in the marketplace. What is scarce and what we are desperately in need of is refineries to manufacture gasoline. But if the oil companies would actually use the huge subsidies they receive to build more refineries, the price of gas would plummet. Since our politicians have not had the courage to put strings attached to the corporate welfare they so generously hand out, there is no incentive to let that happen. Far better that oil companies just direct the slush fund of cash right into their bank accounts and screw the American consumer.

     Republicans can blame President Obama all they want for the high price of gasoline. In fact they can accuse him of engaging in a conspiracy to drive up the price of gas. They’re lying on both counts, but since when did that ever matter? American voters are too stupid to see through that bullshit, especially since they are the ones that are being killed at the pumps every single day. And while it clearly isn’t the President’s fault, I refuse to believe that a President can’t do anything about it. There are a lot of things a President can do. Anything from removing subsidies and tax breaks to oil companies with overseas shell corporations that only exist as tax havens, thereby using the windfall to lower the gasoline taxes which drive up the price, to the more radical approach of simply subsidizing the price of gas directly at the pump.

     If that sounds too much like socialized gasoline, it is, but so what? Subsidizing as a tool to boost the economy has been working out quite well for that other manufacturing Superpower, the one that has surpassed us as the number one economy in the world- China. We can call it a stimulus so it doesn’t sound like communism. Oh, but I forgot. Anything that helps out the American consumer is automatically labeled communist by Republicans. They would much rather damage the environment with off-shore drilling and dangerous pipelines than take a subsidized approach that resembles socialism.

     And speaking of dangerous pipeline ventures, we may have thought the Keystone XL Pipeline debate was over once President Obama killed the deal. But Republicans know better and so should we. Sure the Republicans were going to use it as one more example of a job-killing action by Democrats, but it was the hopes of the liberals in the Progressive base that President Obama would stand his ground on environmental concerns for once. If he actually did that, it would surely be a first for him.

     The Republicans are winning this argument, as usual, because they are doing an excellent job of turning this debate into a focus only on how it represents a massive jobs project (of course they’re lying about the numbers, but who’s counting) and ignoring the devastating environmental disaster this pipeline would create. The Democrats, on the other hand, are doing a horrible job of showing how destructive a pipeline would be to the environment especially in this instance where it’s only objective is to move the most toxic crude oil in the world thousands of miles across this nation’s most important fresh water aquifer, while at the same time being unable to deny the argument that this would in fact create jobs. President Obama has caved on issues under attacks with far less ammunition than this.

     This is why it is no surprise that he has just announced that they plan to meet the Republicans half way by fast-tracking the permits for the lower half of the construction of this pipeline. It’s only a mater of time before the President throws in the towel on the other half. Unfortunately for the millions of residents across the Midwest, they’ll need a lot more than towels to clean up the mess, not if but when this pipeline has a breach. There has never been a pipeline anywhere that hasn’t suffered leaks in the line. The oil industry knows this, the government knows this, and the Republicans don’t give a shit. To make matters worse, the government agency in charge of manning and monitoring the more than 100,000 miles of oil pipelines across this country is poorly understaffed and underfunded to safely do the job. But what else is new? For Republicans that’s the icing on the cake.

     This is one more example of President Obama caving to pressure from Republicans for political expedience at the expense of core constituents he believes has no where else to go, and the fragile eco-systems which will probably not be showing signs of distress until long after he is re-elected. And in the grand scheme of things, isn’t his re-election all that really matters? To Democrats, the answer is a resounding yes.

 

• Lying his way to the top:

     If you’re probably still bewildered by why Mitt Romney is the clear front-runner for the Republican Nomination, you are not alone. So is the Republican leadership. The answer to this strange phenomenon is simple. It’s because he is the biggest liar in the country right now, which makes him the most entertaining candidate we have. There’s nothing Americans love more than to be entertained. Just toss us some bread to go along with it and we’re perfectly happy to consume your lies as long as it closely resembles what we want to hear. We don’t like to be distracted with accuracy or fundamental truth. Bread and circuses.

     Rick Santorum may be a raving religious fanatic and Newt Gingrich may be a conceited narcissist, both endearing qualities to Tea Party kooks, but Romney has the edge because he is by far the most dishonest person running. (Based on that scale Ron Paul is a Saint). But if this is true, and everyone seems to know it, why is Romney still surging? That’s an easy one too. Americans have become so cynical and so disillusioned by the lack of anything that even remotely resembles honesty from their politicians, they have lowered the bar to the point where you only have to say what they want to hear, even if you are clearly just making it up as you go along. There is nobody better at this than Mitt Romney.

    As for the question of whether or not Mitt Romney can beat Barack Obama, the odds are against it, but remember that a long shot is still always considered a viable option in politics and there are plenty of gamblers out there willing to take a chance for that big score. The main reason why this is even a remote possibility is not because Republicans know he’s a liar and will rally behind him anyway. And it’s not because Barack Obama is still as black as he was in 2008 and this is still just as racist a country as it was then. It’s because Democrats, and specifically Barack Obama know what a liar Mitt Romney is, they just won’t call him one. Dancing around it with semantics and gentlemanly metaphors is just as bad as ignoring it altogether.

     Newt Gingrich called Romney a liar, right there on national television, and contrary to highly held beliefs, he was not struck down by lightning. In fact it threw the CNBC commentator so far off her game, she had to make him repeat it. It was by far Newt’s shining moment. I almost wanted him to win just on that alone. But first he would have had to tape his mouth shut for the rest of the campaign and we all know that was never going to happen.

     Falling short of a full scale declaration that Mitt Romney is a habitual liar, silence gives justifiable acceptability to the frightening thought that they must pretend Romney is telling the truth, if for no other reason, than so that Republicans can swallow the idea of actually having to punch his card come November without throwing up, instead of doing what most Republicans will feel compelled to do upon exiting the voting booth- call the political suicide hotline.

 

• Bristol speaks out:

     Bristol Palin is in the news again. Why, you ask? So is everyone else. For some strange reason Americans are engrossed in every movement this woman makes. Whether it’s conservative Tea Party or irritable bowel, if she stubs her big toe in the morning, we have to read all about it. We see her popping up every now and again, in movies, television shows, book signings, dance contests, and interviews. Wherever you turn she’s there. It’s disturbing in an eerie kind of way.

     This time she felt compelled to chime in on the Sandra Fluke controversy and cash in on some of that media sympathy for herself. She’s even gone so far as to post a Blog aimed directly at President Obama, chastising him for not calling her personally, as he did Miss Fluke. Apparently she’s insulted by what she refers to as comparative attacks on her character by the comedian, Bill Maher, which shows how out of touch with reality she really is. Well, she is, after all, the daughter of Sarah Palin.

     Sarah, Bristol, Levi, and the entire Palin clan should get down on their knees every goddamn day and kiss John McCain’s shoes for what he did for that family. Every single one of them is making a fortune from the notoriety brought upon them when Sarah Palin cost McCain the Presidency in 2008. Every pregnant out of wedlock high school student in Alaska wishes she was the butt of Bill Maher’s jokes on national television. If it wasn’t for the skyrocket to fame and the fizzling descent back to Earth that Sarah Palin has rained upon her family, they’d all still be back in Wasilla, clipping coupons and sucking the venison off a bone in front of the TV.

     Bristol was named after the three most important events in her mother, Sarah Palin’s life. The Bristol Inn where she was lucky enough to get a job fluffing pillows, Bristol, Connecticut where she fantasized about getting a job (with ESPN), and Bristol Bay, Alaska where her father taught her to fish. At first Sarah toyed with the idea of naming her daughter after the first one, Inn. But that seemed inadequate somehow. Calling her daughter Connecticut was seen as a betrayal to Alaska, the state she loved so much she pledged to someday portray the Governor for a few months before quitting. She almost settled on naming the girl Bay, but didn’t want her daughter to grow up being confused with Pat Buchanan’s sister. So she decided to incorporate them all and just call her Bristol.

     And what an amazing life this young woman has had so far. Even though it took her five years to finish High School, she was able to start her own lobbying and consulting firm, BSMP, right after graduating. Less than two years later, with getting drunk and pregnant as her only cultural achievement under her belt, she wrote her first memoir. Needless to say, it was a very thin book.

 

 

Gary Forte, reporting

March 23^rd, 2012