February 3, 2005
The New Heist
Someone said Bush is giving his address. I thought they said Bush was wearing a dress. That wouldn't surprise me. He talks tough when it's other people's lives on the line, but I've always suspected he's somewhat of a princess underneath all that bravado. One on one I wouldn't expect to see much from him.The American media is so vulgar and nauseating at this point it's hard to stomach even minute exposures to it. God. The country now is severely demoralized. The people with any brains who can see through the sham feel utterly helpless to do anything about the train wreck they are aboard. Many of them even suspect strongly that they are the majority, that the election was once again a huge game of three card monte carried out by the world's most audacious swindlers. And still they feel helpless. You see the fraud, you see that you are being taken for a ride, and the thief is laughing at you, robbing you blind, robbing you for life itself.
Now Bush and his merry pirates have their eyes on Social Security, the latest Weapons of Mass Destruction scam. These are men of few tricks. They just play the same ones over and over. But they get away with them. That's the sad part.
So today's AOL shows Bush wearing glasses, looking dignified, intelligent, studious, actually looking a way that Bush could never really be in real life. He's even wearing a green suit. Now this is a new Bush. Bush, as much of a slouch as he is in so many ways, is always decked out to the nines. He wears $3,000 suits every day, and they are always perfect and extremely rich looking, and very dark. Usually black or close to it. Black cuts an incomparably sharp image, and that's the image Bush affects. It doesn't matter whose idea it is because Bush/corporate America can afford the very top media advisers to package Bush's image.
But today, AOL is showing us the new, no doubt kindergentler Bush -- a radical departure: glasses! down on his nose like he's really studying something. And a green suit. The green Bush.
Beware, this new green Bush. This is a new scam, a new disguise, another heist. Men "with an eye for opportunity" have set their sights on Social Security, and Bush is their instrument for securing their booty. Trillions for the "conversion process". Where do you think that is going to go? Bush's friends are lining up all the way to China.
February 5, 2005
What It Is
Instead of listening to the State of the Onion speech, I put on tapes I made of the Vote For Change concerts, with Bruce Springsteen, REM, Dave Matthews, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Brown, John Mellencamp ... lots more, James Taylor performing with the Dixie Chicks.Once again, it fortified my belief that we need a music revolution. Musicians need to take back their craft from the corporations that rule the music industry, keeping it very narrowly conceived and packaged. Music is a magic power and it must be unleashed once again.
The political channels are closed. There is no press in this country, not in the sense of the fourth estate, willing to challenge power, to monitor and hold politicians accountable. The mainstream of America has been disenfranchised, cleverly shut out of the decision-making processes of the country.
But if the official and traditional channels are closed, it is time for an upheaval of the public in assertion of its rights -- a cultural revolution, a full exertion of the power within each person's private realm. Music is essential. Come all ye musicians!
Bruce Springsteen delivered an eloquent monologue, one of many at the concert, stating what a reasonable American agenda would be. Not a left wing agenda. It's just portrayed that way by the radical right spin machine. They are mainstream American values: a responsible foreign poverty, a living wage, basic stuff. "The America we carry in our hearts is waiting," he said. It was so much better than the primetime fare of America that night.
Corn Time -- By the way. I notice David Corn's more bizarre aspects have been bouncing around the Internet. Mark Crispin Miller sent out a link to Corn's baffling piece in The Nation profusely praising Caesar -- "What's he smoking?" Miller asked. No wonder. Here's Corn, if you ever heard it: "Bush went beyond that this evening. He produced grand and effective political theater. In the middle of the address, he transformed the war in Iraq--which even after the historic election there arguably remains his largest liability--into a single, powerfully poignant moment." Whew! He musta drank the Kool Aid! Yo Dave! Down boy!
Okay, here's one more: this is The Nation, don't forget -- "This president does not back down. Perhaps that's why he won in November." Corn viciously attacked Greg Palast for getting too close to the goodies in the vote fraud case. Whenever anyone takes it out of the simple everything-is-okay-don't-worry mode and suggests that there may be some very sinister things going on with "this president", Mr. Corn seems to get terribly upset. Beside himself really.
Then Miller sent a link from Mike Ruppert. I have found Corn's venomous tirades attacking what he considers to be fringey theories very strange and troubling in the past. Glad I'm not the only one.
"It's fun to shoot some people", says "top U.S. Marine General". "Some Audience Members Clap." Friends and neighbors! I will be gone soon for a week. I may be able to file from where I am, I may not. Until the sight.
February 16, 2005
Did George W. Bush Have Sex with That Man, James Guckert? Democrats.com The Secret Life of James Guckert, alias Jeff Gannon, a $200 a night male escort and "journalist" with access to the White House. Salon via Truthout.org Your Lies are Showing -- CNN used the same aerial photo to report about alleged nukes in North Korea on Saturday and Iran on Wednesday. Democratic Underground What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us. Robert Scheer "... it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided... The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden." LA Times Media Guilty of Inciting Violence -- A World Tribunal on Iraq has concluded that American and British media are guilty of inciting violence through their misreporting leading into the invasion of Iraq. Inter Press Service Dahr Jamail
February 18, 2005
Look out for Bad Hank -- Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat House Committee on Government Reform, is asking the committee to investigate whether the Bush administration misused the classification process to withold 9/11 investigation results for political purposes, and the veracity of statements by Condoleezza Rice to the committee. Truthout
February 23, 2005
Media funding/censorship. Funding of "left" media by rightwing foundations. Gatekeepers Gannon Links -- (Thanks to Mark at OilEmpire.us) "Jeff Gannon", White House insider, phony reporter, homosexual prostitute. Bill Maher: "He actually had two jobs - one was sleazy and shameful, the other was a gay male prostitute." Oil Empire rigorousintuition White House Honey Pot Life and Moonie Times of GWB CBS on Gannon and Rover Daily Kos Online Journal Madsen on GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring The Franklin Coverup Scandal, the Child sex ring that reached Bush/Reagan White House Raw Story AmericaBlog. It's the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
February 25, 2005
Great 9/11 information archive site: reopen911.org Number One -- German protestors in Mainz called Bush "the number one terrorist". German police confiscated one poster that read: "We had our Hitler, now you have yours." Reuters Lying and killing is okay. Bare breasts are immoral -- A Michigan artist was sentenced to jail over a mural with a bare-breasted version of Eve. WSWS.org Gannongate: It's Worse Than You Think -- By Eric Boehlert at Salon.com. See Truthout.org Inside the US Media Fishbowl -- The comparison between the way the world media and the US media play the story of Bush's implicit confession of drug use on recently revealed tapes is a good test case on how US media differs from the rest of the world. Washington Post via Truthout Hunter Thompson Remembered -- On Democracy Now, an interview from January 2003 with Thompson is posted. Here's a sample: "I don't really know Iraq. I made a point of getting to know it a lot better. It was a very advanced, progressive country, had, what, 90% literacy, health care for the whole entire population. They were doing well, prosperous, high literacy. Many more book stores per capita in Iraq than there are in this country. Many. No more. We bombed their children. We killed their husbands and wives and we bombed them, and we saw her, and we're going to do it again. Just random killing like that, mass killing to force a population to get rid of Saddam so we can move in and take over and control the oil, God damn it, if that's not evil, I don't know what would be. You know, Bush, heÕs really the evil one in here. Well, more than just him. We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me. A lot more never say anything. We'll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off in the next week by -- it's always unknown Bush [inaudible] strangers who commit suicide right afterward. No witnesses. They have a new kind of crime."
February 26, 2005
Secret tapes of George W. reveal more than just drug use. See "The win-at-all-costs president." MSNBC