Saturday, July 5, 2008

"We Almost Deserve It"

or, What Will It Take For Americans To Wake Up?

From In Search of Optimism

Jamie Dimon, the affable grandson of Greek immigrants who runs J.P. Morgan Chase....

Government action is the key, Dimon said. To make his point, he asked the participants whether they were "pissed off" about the high price of gasoline at the pump. Most hands shot up.

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!" Dimon declared. "We almost deserve it," he said, because as a country we had dithered for decades rather than transforming our energy economy. "We knew about this in 1974!" he said. The crisis we face now is the result of a "lack of political will."

(read the entire article)


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Friday, July 4, 2008

One of America's most notorious race-baiters has died

Race-Baiting Former Senator Jesse Helms Has Died
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet at 1:21 PM on July 4, 2008.

From the article:

David Broder of the Washington Post summed up Helms' legacy in an 2001 op/ed entitled, Jesse Helms, White Racist, "What is unique about Helms -- and from my viewpoint, unforgivable -- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans."

That says most of it. Here's the rest:

Upon Helms' death Heritage Foundation president Ed Fuelner praised the late conservative icon effusively, vowing that the legacy of this "great patriot" would live on. In 2002 Heritage bestowed its highest honor on Helms for his “dedicated, unflinching and articulate advocate of conservative policy and principle"--which tells you just about everything you need to know about Helms and the conservative movement.

(read the entire article)


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I Am An American

American Flag
What am I?

I am a free man -- a good and decent man -- a man of compassion, generosity, and understanding -- a true friend, a steadfast ally, and a bitter foe.

I owe my allegiance to a government founded in the belief that among the rights of man are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, I would acknowledge no other. I can redress my government for injury; not satisfied with redress, I can elect a new one. I have watched my government function smoothly during periods of transfer of power caused by re-election, assassination, and resignation.

While other nations have a distinct race, religion, and/or geographic denominator, I live among people of my home without fear of intrusion by anyone -- citizen or government designee -- unless they have my personal invitation or a duly authorized search warrant.

I have a press to keep me informed -- a press free to write, without inhibition, the truth as they see it. A press that needs fear no repression, no retaliation, no censorship so long as it prints the truth.

I live under a system of justice, merciful and fairly administered, where I am assumed innocent until proven guilty -- a system which provides me appellate privilege while denying it to the power of the state.

I am free to go anywhere I want, earn my living in any way that suits me and, based on that freedom, I have created a standard of living unequalled in the history of man and envied the world over.

I have suffered in humility at the consequences of my mistakes -- economic deprivation, social injustice, unequal opportunity and racial prejudice to name a few -- but, once aware of these mistakes, I have set out to right the wrongs they created.

I have faced challenges to my way of life. I have fought and died countless times from Lexington and Concord to Vietnam. I was humbled at Valley Forge, Pearl Harbor, Corregidor and Malmady. But these experiences gave me the character I needed to go to Yorktown, Gettysburg, Midway and Normandy. I cherish my freedom above all else -- I bow to no tyrant.

I am two hundred years old today. I have never been so proud of my ancient heritage, so grateful for my present situation, and so confident of the future. Today, I reaffirm my allegiance to, faith in, and love of my country. To the proposition that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, I do humbly pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

I am an American.


An anonymous letter to the Washington Post editor on July 4, 1976.

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Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Future of Home Computing

From 1954: This is how the RAND Corporation envisioned what a home PC would look like 2004:

click on image for larger view

The text from the picture:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.


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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Baby boomers: Born to be wild? Or ...

Bored…Tubby…Mild!
by Walt Handelsman

Click on image for animated toon.

Get your Motrin ready,
Head out on a treadmill.
The heating pad is warming,
In case your herniated disk kills.

We’re aging Boomers but refuse to show it,
I just got implants and a tummy tuck.
A triple bypass and two knee replacements,
Getting old really sucks!

I just took Viagra,
Both the kids are out late.
I’ll go get some Merlot,
Let’s hope it won’t inflame your prostate.

We’re Baby Boomers! The original rebels,
Used to smoke pot but now we drink green tea.
We tripped on acid, now we have acid reflux,
We’re in the AARP!

We were spoiled, pushy, wild,
But now we’re bored, tubby and mild.
We used to get so high,
Now they call us spry!!!

Bored…Tubby…Mild!
Bored…Tubby…Mild!


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Energy: Carter was right

CommonDreams dot org

In his recent news conference, George Bush Jr. suggested that our nation's "problem" with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. First, Junior said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in coming. We haven't had an energy policy in this country."

This was followed by, "That's exactly what I've been saying to the American people -- 10 years ago if we'd had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And -- but we haven't done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we're in." As is so often the case, Bush was lying.

(read the entire article)


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Monday, June 23, 2008

A Comedic Giant... Gone

Sadly, the world is now a less funny place...

George Carlin



Carlin's Seven Words




Carlin on Religion


George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin
1937-2008

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

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Sunday, June 15, 2008

GWB: Worst. President. Ever. Part II

Posted June 11, 2008 04:57 PM (EST)

From the article:

War mongering is a significant aspect of your legacy, but I think we can conclude, and without much debate, that your legacy will also be one of criminality, failure and a degree of incompetence rarely achieved by any American president, much less one whose deficit of character is rivaled only by his nearly unprecedented lack of humility in the face of his unprecedented roster of inadequacies.

Sorry.

As it turns out, you won't have much control over your legacy and the history of your administration anyway. You might have some cursory input, but no-one really takes you seriously anymore and anything you put forth will be taken as just another work of fiction; another bit of propaganda.

Your legacy will ultimately be written by those of us who have been actively documenting your presidency in real time -- millions of voices authoring the narrative of your awful regime and preserving it with digital clarity one trespass at a time.

And everywhere we look, we can plainly observe your smirking, affectless footprint.

Death, poverty, war, pain, ignorance, blind patriotism, joblessness, and abandoned homes. And guess what? We're writing it down on the Internets. Your history, Mr. President, is being written at this very moment by those of us who are watching our homes collapse in value and our friends and relatives sent to places like Ramadi and Fallujah and, in some cases, Walter Reed or worse. Your history, Mr. President, isn't going to be settled and published decades from now. It's being published immediately and without the fog of memory to obscure the ugly details.

(read the entire article)

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Farewell to a journalistic giant

Tim Russert
Timothy John Russert, Jr.
1950-2008

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Senator McCain wants context? Fine.


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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Yes...An Amazing Accomplishment!

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow

May 7, 2008
Jonathan Schwarz:
What an Amazing Accomplishment

It’s September 12, 2001. You’re sitting in front of a TV, watching footage of the World Trade Center collapse over and over and over again.

All of a sudden, someone from seven years in the future walks out of a tiny temporal vortex, and tells you: George W. Bush is going to fuck this up so badly that in 2008, the United States of America will likely elect as president a black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim. Oh, and he also admits he’s used cocaine.

I think it would have been easier to convince me of the reality of time travel. “No, no, I believe you really are from the future. But the other stuff, that’s CRAZY.”

posted by Jonathan Schwarz at 3:33 PM


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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

You'll Get What You Deserve

I'm Voting Republican - Click on image to enter site
click on image to enter site

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The Historically Challenged

There has been an obvious attempt of late by the right-wing noise machine to re-write (very current) history. Unfortunately for that noise machine, some of us have memories which go back further than 10 seconds ago. Let’s review some examples and how they illuminate this blatant attempt at historical revision.

First up, there’s the attempt to divorce conservative and Republican. This usually takes the form of “George Bush never was a conservative” proclamations from the pundits and mouthpieces on the right. For example, when Bush was at 60% approval in the polls (in November, 2003) Jonah Goldberg said “...Bush has proved that he's a Reaganite, not a "Bushie.” And when Bush plummeted to 32% (in May, 2007) what did he say? Goldberg said, “look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.” From “Reaganite” (in 2003) to looking like a “liberal” (in 2007)? Flip-flop.

Next, let’s look at the price of gasoline. The right-wingers want to blame the (just elected in November, 2006) Democratic Congress for the $4.00/gallon gasoline Americans are now facing. If they were honest with us and themselves (which they’re not), they would know that a stable Middle East equals lessened fears of potential shortages caused by the disruption of the world’s oil supplies, which in turn equals stable speculation on future oil prices. Instead, the Bush administration, in its foolish invasion of Iraq (and now saber-rattling over Iran), has caused oil speculators to raise the price of oil to astronomic levels. When Bush took office oil was around $30 a barrel and gasoline was around $1.20 a gallon. Now oil is $140 a barrel and gasoline is over $4.00 a gallon. Sorry right-wingers, this is not the result of action or inaction on the part of Democrats in Congress since January, 2007. This is a direct result of a destabilized Middle East, compliments of the Bush Administration’s war of choice/invasion of Iraq in 2003. And a destabilized Middle East equals fears of disruption of the world’s oil supplies, which equals higher prices driven by those fears of the speculators.

Finally, there’s the Iraq war itself. A few weeks ago Jonah Goldberg published a column on the surge and the Congressional vote last summer authorizing it, comparing John McCain’s vote for it to Barack Obama’s vote against it. Goldberg piously announced that had America followed Obama’s vote all the wonderful things in Iraq (since the surge began) would not have happened. What a perfect example of choosing a point in time which somehow proves your argument, while conveniently ignoring an earlier point in time which completely demolishes the point you’re trying to make. Sorry, Mr. Goldberg, but had you gone back just a little further in time to, say, 2002, and seen that McCain was in favor of the invasion in the first place, while Obama was against it, you might have been a little more circumspect in your judgment. Heroic efforts after the fact (in 2007) do not negate stupid choices in the first place (in 2002).

As I said at the beginning, some people have longer memories than the right-wing noise machine expects. Their attempts at revisionist history are all-too-easily spotted and refuted. Better luck next time.



This article is also posted on OpEdNews.com (The Historically Challenged).

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Friday, May 16, 2008

GWB: Worst. President. Ever.

There are those who erroneously claim that Jimmy Carter was the worst president ever. They cite the economic situation during his administration and the Iranian hostage crisis as proof of their assertion.

I would argue that, without a doubt, we are witnessing and living through this country's worst president ever: George W. Bush. It isn't a matter of the so-called "irrational hatred of President Bush." Nope. I believe that future historians will reflect what this Michael Hirsh article from Newsweek has to say, and it isn't pretty:

NewsweekAn Unnatural Disaster
by Michael Hirsh

In a month of horrific natural disasters—the China quake, the Burma cyclone—it's instructive to consider what one of the biggest unnatural disasters in memory looks like. That is the decline in America's position in the world from where we were when George W. Bush inherited power on Jan. 20, 2001, to what he will bequeath to the next president eight months from now.

(read the entire article)


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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Reason for $4.00 a gallon gasoline

From our friends at Democratic Underground, and the 336th edition of The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (in this case, #7, George W. Bush):

Have you noticed?
$126 a barrel
Ha Ha Ha
Kiss Me You Fool!

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Wednesday, March 5, 2008

2006 global military spending at a glance

2006 global military spending at a glance

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Friday, February 15, 2008

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

An ordinary school bus1. So, I was riding to work one morning and was stopped at a traffic light. Next to me, in the right-hand lane, was a school bus... a regular, yellow, elementary-middle-high school, public school bus. Nothing extraordinary about it at all.

Then I noticed a black grill near the bottom of the bus chassis. On that grill was a blue tag/label. I couldn't quite make out the wording on the label, but there appeared to be a penguin on it. A penguin?

As the light was changing and I started to move I was finally able to get a close enough view of the label and discovered that it was for an air conditioning company. School buses now have air conditioning! What is up with that?!

Now, I didn't walk to school as a child, uphill, both ways, barefooted, in the snow. But I never rode in an air conditioned school bus even though I attended elementary, junior (showing my age) and high school in Florida and rode public school busses throughout most of my primary and secondary education.By the side of the road

No wonder kids today are spoiled.

2. It is an un-nerving experience to see several (what appear to be used) cans of whipping cream by the side of the road. Especially a road with no normal pedestrian traffic.






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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory on OpEdNews.com

OpEd News



February 10, 2008

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
by Hans Meyer
http://www.opednews.com/

Recently, while reading political opinions on Internet message boards I ran across this comment:

“Once again Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

The author was commenting on the Democratic primary process, and the possibility that it will be the party’s Superdelegates who will ultimately decide the nominee at the convention in August. The assumption is that the Democrats will doom their nominee’s prospects in November by nominating the candidate who did not get a majority of the primary election votes.

While I don’t necessarily dispute the “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” part of this comment, considering the chances for the Democratic Party in this election, I did start to wonder about the “once again” part. Have Democrats “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” in presidential elections, time and again, therefore justifying the “once again” part of this comment?

(read the entire article)

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Third-Tier Pundits, Part 2

JONAH GOLDBERG, BOTTOM FEEDER
by Justin Raimondo

Some excerpts:

The absolute evil of what passes for today's conservative movement may not shock my more liberal readers, but those of us on the Right who were brought up in a more salubrious time remember when things were quite different. Believe it or not, conservatives didn't always resort to smears instead of arguments – indeed, they were the most frequent recipients of smears (let the shade of Barry Goldwater testify on my behalf!). As a tiny minority during the 1950s and 60s, the organized right-wing in America was an ideologically diverse and intellectually exciting crowd – a far cry from the lockstep party-lining one-dimensional movement of war-bots we see today.

=====

Much has been made of the lack of civility in public discourse, noted especially during the Clinton years, but no one has recently made the point that the public debates of a republican order differ qualitatively from politics in the age of Empire. In his 1992 lecture to the Heritage Foundation, Kirk cited Amaury de Riencourt, the author of a prophetic book entitled The Coming Caesars, published in 1957, widely discussed at the time and now forgotten:

"Unless measures of restraint should be taken, Riencourt wrote – and taken promptly – the United States would fall under the domination of 20th century Caesars."

Kirk went on to cite this passage from the text:

"With Caesarism and Civilization, the great struggles between political parties are no longer concerned with principles, programs and ideologies, but with men. Marius, Sulla, Cato, Brutus still fought for principles. But now, everything became personalized. Under Augustus, parties still existed, but there were no more Optimates or Populares. No more conservatives or democrats. Men campaigned for or against Tiberius or Drusus or Caius Caesar. No one believed any more in the efficacy of ideas, political panaceas, doctrines, or systems, just as the Greeks had given up building great philosophic systems generations before. Abstractions, ideas, and philosophies were rejected to the periphery of their lives and of the empire, to the East where Jews, agnostics, Christians, and Mithraists attempted to conquer the world of souls and minds while the Caesars ruled their material existence."

The money sentence: Everything becomes personalized.
This is the substance and the style of the post-Clinton conservatives, whose polemics are reduced to drive-by smearing. Formerly obsessed with the sexual antics of the Arkansas Caesar, they are now employing the same tactics against their enemies on the Right – witness the really nasty and quite personal assaults launched on Taki, Buchanan, and myself. The drive-by smear technique, as perfected by Radosh, Goldberg, the National Review-Weekly Standard crowd – and their enablers in the Establishment liberal media complex, such as Howard Kurtz and Alexander Star – is their only weapon. Ideas don't matter, truth is irrelevant – if only they can have war in the Middle East, the ends will have justified the means.

(read the entire article)


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Thursday, December 6, 2007

The Crazification Factor

Click for larger image
(click image for larger view)

This article, Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor, first appeared on Kung Fu Monkey on October 07, 2005. It is an excellent observation, but the real point is in this comment:

John: But he's (President Bush) citing that desire as a basis for our strategy. You can't cite your enemy's delusional hopes as a basis for a rational strategy. Goals don't exist in a vacuum, they're linked to capability. David Koresh was utterly committed to being Jesus Christ. See how far that got him.

Either Bush is making strategy based on a delusional goal of his opponent, which is idiotic; or he's saying he believes his opponent has the capability of achieving this delusional goal, which is idiotic. Neither bodes well for the republic.

(read the entire article)


That bears repeating:

You can't cite your enemy's delusional hopes as a basis for a rational strategy. Goals don't exist in a vacuum, they're linked to capability.

Indeed!

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Saturday, December 1, 2007

Taxi Drivers for Torture

The Free World Radio NetworkI want to thank my guest, Dr. Andy Opel for joining me on today's broadcast of Situation Awareness (click here to listen to the broadcast).

Here is a list of resources from today's program:


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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Giving Thanks... and Remembering

President John F. Kennedy
While giving thanks for all we have let us remember this date, 44 years ago, and be thankful that, for a thousand days America was led by John F. Kennedy.

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Two Years Since Murtha's Call

Click for larger image
Click image for larger view.
Click here for original post on The Gavel.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Viewing the Bush Administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt

LA Times
Bush strategist looks back in sadness

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2007

Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak -- a word he uses -- of his split with President Bush.

Dowd, 46, is one of the nation's leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush's policies -- policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

(read the entire article)

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Yankee, Go Home

The Washington Post


In the Mideast, America Casts an Imperial Shadow
By Rashid Khalidi
Sunday, November 11, 2007; Page B03

Most Americans think that our role as a world power began with World War II, the "good war," and then continued with the similarly noble Cold War. We like to think that the United States acts in the world exclusively in the name of ideals such as freedom and democracy.

So it may come as a bit of a shock to learn that the United States has had an uninterrupted military presence in the Middle East for 65 years, dating to 1942. Most Americans would also bristle at the idea that this presence, from the arrival of GIs in North Africa onward, has essentially become a continuation of nearly a century and a half of European military adventures in the region. But history shows a disturbing continuity between what the European colonial powers did in the Middle East, starting with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and what the United States is now doing in Iraq and elsewhere. Indeed, the United States has managed in a few short years to do more damage in the region than did the hated colonial powers that were finally driven out only a few decades ago.

(read the entire article)

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Friday, November 2, 2007

The Hopeless Stupidity of 9/11 Conspiracies

Rolling Stone
THE LOW POST: I, Left Gatekeeper
Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare
by Matt Taibbi Posted Sep 26, 2006 12:14 PM

A few weeks ago I wrote a column on the anniversary of 9/11 that offhandedly dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theorists as "clinically insane." I expected a little bit of heat in response, but nothing could have prepared me for the deluge of fuck-you mail that I actually got. Apparently every third person in the United States thinks George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.

"You're just another MSM-whore left gatekeeper paid off by corporate America," said one writer. "What you do isn't journalism at all, you dick," said another. "You're the one who's clinically insane," barked a third, before educating me on the supposed anomalies of physics involved with the collapse of WTC-7.

I have two basic gripes with the 9/11 Truth movement. The first is that it gives supporters of Bush an excuse to dismiss critics of this administration. I have no doubt that every time one of those Loose Change dickwads opens his mouth, a Republican somewhere picks up five votes. In fact, if there were any conspiracy here, I'd be far more inclined to believe that this whole movement was cooked up by Karl Rove as a kind of mass cyber-provocation, along the lines of Gordon Liddy hiring hippie peace protesters to piss in the lobbies of hotels where campaign reporters were staying.

Secondly, it's bad enough that people in this country think Tim LaHaye is a prophet and Sean Hannity is an objective newsman. But if large numbers of people in this country can swallow 9/11 conspiracy theory without puking, all hope is lost. Our best hope is that the Japanese take pity on us and allow us to serve as industrial slaves in their future empire, farming sushi rice and assembling robot toys.

I don't have the space here to address every single reason why 9/11 conspiracy theory is so shamefully stupid, so I'll have to be content with just one point: 9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime.

(read the entire article)

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

"There Isn’t Actually Any Such Thing As Islamofascism"

New York Times
Fearing Fear Itself
By Paul Krugman

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees — and bombing is the only option, since we’ve run out of troops — is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There’s every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.

Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim “to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us.” He doesn’t say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he’s referring to Al Qaeda — an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.

And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

All of this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was — an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary — the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction.

Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration’s rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up — perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the base’s older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.

And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.

Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself — the unreasoning fear that has taken over one of America’s two great political parties.

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Questioning 9/11 and to Hell with Caution on OpEdNews.com

OpEd News



October 30, 2007

Questioning 9/11 and to Hell with Caution
by Michael Shaw
http://www.opednews.com/

From the article:

As for David Horowitz, here's a guy who is promoting a rash of anti-radical Islamic events on several US College campuses and in his last outing and along with his perpetual sidekick, Ann Coulter; had invited a guest speaker who turned out to be one of Britain's biggest holocaust deniers. Isn't that a kick in the shorts!?! Frankly I see him(and Coulter) in the same light as I see LaRouche, Bollyn, Piper and Carto.

(read the entire article)


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