There's still time, but this is a limited time offer! Then we can move to the
war crimes trial, and especially the war crimes trial at the Hague (but we can
presumably do those things after his term).
Dick is Sick: Just Say "No!" to Torture (a letter to my elected officials). I've also signed this Amnesty International Pledge: "The America I believe in doesn't torture people or use cruel, inhuman treatment; doesn't hold people without charge, without fair trials, without hope, and without end; doesn't kidnap people off the street and ship them to nations known for their brutality; doesn't justify the use of secret prisons; and does not rob people of their basic dignity."
Call
home the troops from george bush's Iraq Adventure (and experiment
in financial attrition: as of December 2005, each American citizen has
racked up a bill of $2000 for the war on terror -- have you gotten
your money's worth? My family's in for $8000; I'm sure that our sons
Tchapo and Thad won't mind paying that some day...when george, dick,
and I are dead.)
"Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion: Estimates vary, but all agree
price is far higher than initially expected." MSNBC webpage, March 17, 2006
($1 trillion would put it at $3333 per person). Does it bother anyone else that
these neo-cons low-balled their estimates (ridiculous numbers, like 5 billion)
to get us into an unjustified adventure that has enriched their companies
(e.g. Halliburton) to the tune of untold billions?
(Feb 28, 2008) The cost of the war has been revised upwards:
The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph
Stiglitz, tells it -- but not all, as he also suggests that the rest of the
world will pay three trillion dollars more, as well.
Now they're spying on us! Did you know that you're a suspect? We ALL
ARE....
Pre-emptive war waged under false pretenses (c'mon, let's just say lying
and
more lying)
.
Oh yeah, it was Bush who authorized the leaking of
classified information which ultimately led to the outing of CIA
operative Valerie Plame (to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson --
former ambassador to Iraq -- who was contesting the intelligence on
WMDs (when, in fact, there weren't
any -- oops!). Then he pardons Libby, the only one convicted in the
affair.
Update Wed Nov 28 20:16:29 EST 2007: msnbc headline reads
[former Bush press secretary] "McClellan accuses Bush of deceit in CIA leak Former spokesman says both president and vice president involved". Bush and Cheney, the Dark Side again. Check out the video.
So much to love about this administration! Bush's labor department's 2006 report showed that real wages are down again, for the third year in a row
(source
). The rich get richer, the
poor get poorer, and Bush touts his economy? I've got some news that
compassionate conservatives must not have heard, George:
17% of American children live below the poverty line
(over 20% in Kentucky): how's that for success?
Actually I've found the WMD: it's Bush! It was there all along. He's destroyed Iraq, of course, and thousands upon thousands of lives; he's destroyed our traditional friendships in favor of friendships with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; he's destroyed the budget surplus; he's working hard to destroy the environment. He's da bomb, to die for....
Maybe it's David Addington: he's the WMD, a stealth missile. No one's heard of him, but he's in charge, since he's in charge of Cheney.
The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who defined Nixon as the extreme example of Presidential over-reaching in his book "The Imperial Presidency" (1973), said he believes that Bush "is more grandiose than Nixon." As for the Administration's legal defense of torture, which Addington played a central role in formulating, Schlesinger said, "No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world -- ever." (From the New Yorker's article on David Addington)
Pre-emptive warfare waged under false pretenses IS a moral issue....
We must keep an eye on Bush and his gang of rogue elephants: `... a
NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11,
Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and [former] Attorney General John
Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that
opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to
sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the
rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the
objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military
lawyers.and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened
to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized
outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of
prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation --
methods that the Red Cross concluded were ``tantamount to torture."' (source: Newsweek, May 24th, 2004:
The Roots of Torture)
The Bush administration is
torture-friendly -- where is the outrage? On Mon, Nov 7, 2005, I listened
as Bush defended his policy that "We don't torture but we should be allowed to
when it comes to protecting Americans". What part of "torture" doesn't he
understand? Or logic, for that matter....
"...officers and NCOs at point of capture engaged in interrogations using
techniques they literally remembered from movies.... Soldiers need to be
trained in basic tactical interrogation techniques. It's going to be done one
way or the other, why not the right way?" from the 4th
Infantry Division Detainee Operations Assessment (CONUS Team)
White House pressures Congress to reject torture amendment
(CNN, 10/25/2005)
Vice
President for Torture (Washington
Post, 10/26/2005 -- is that a new White House position: "Vice-President for Torture"?)
Cheney
appeals to GOP senators for CIA exemption to torture ban (Detroit News,
11/7/2005)
"The international monitor Human Rights Watch points out that global support for the U.S. in its war on terrorism has diminished because Washington 'too often neglects human rights in its conduct of the war' by overlooking undemocratic practices in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and among Afghan war lords."
[from the Washington Spectator, V29, No. 4, 2/15/2003]
Q: How does one Vote the Bible? (A: verrrry carefully! After all, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." -- Matthew 7:1) Jesus would simply love the Power of Pride bumper stickers!
Historical Bush
approval ratings. One thing that amuses me to no end is the giant approval
boost he got after 9/11. Was that chest-thumping he did really enough of a
reason to push his approval into the 90s?
Q: You've been known as an advocate of human rights. Have the policies of the current Administration made this more difficult?
Carter: I would say more necessary. What's been done in the last seven years is embarrassing to an American. What we have done through our own government is to torture prisoners, to deprive them of their basic rights to legal counsel, even the right of prisoners to be acquainted with the charges against them. Those kinds of things have been cherished as basic principles of American law and American policy for more than 200 years. To have them subverted and abandoned and condemned is just a travesty of justice and a very serious embarrassment to those of us who -- as Americans and non-Americans -- are committed to human rights."
"As I write this, the radio is spewing more reports of death and destruction in Iraq, now occupied by largely American forces after an illegal invasion based on lies..."
(
Wanda Fish
); Kerry has called the Bush/Cheney program the "Lie and Die" policy.
"This is an eternal war against terrorism. It's like a war against
dandruff." Gore Vidal, Interviewed in the The Progressive (August
2006). Andy says: "I ask myself: How can the American people be so naive?" I
guess Vidal must wonder the same thing....
I saw in the paper that "Bush pushes for the U.S. to beef up science,
math" (Cincinnati Enquirer, Sunday, July 9, 2006): we've got the guy who
doesn't understand evolution, statistics, stem cells, or how to pronounce
"nuclear" pushing for "basic research"? It's criminal.
Evolution: "The evidence
for Evolution is overwhelming" (National Geographic, 11/2004). You know, the
slogan for Kentucky used to be "Where Education Pays". Now it's "Unbridled
Spirit". The Governor, our esteemed President, and a fair supply of lesser
known yahoos say that this whole "evolution thing" is just so much theorizin'
and such. You know what? "Education doesn't pay; dogmatism does." George Bush
and Ernie Fletcher don't know squat about science, and the sad news is that, to
a great extent, they're in charge of determining what goes by the name of
"science" in this country (for the moment).
And now for something positive that you can do, that Bush will hate:
Help Dennis Kucinich keep his seat in Congress, where he continues to be a
principled voice in the sea of yahoos who afflict us as our
"representatives". As Dennis says in this video, he has led the effort against
Bush's Iraqi Adventure, for universal not-for-profit health care, and for fair
trade. Dennis is a voice for justice. Don't let his voice be silenced!
On to more mundane matters....
The world is full of mysteries, and I love mysteries.
"Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of
intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and
control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy." [Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, South End Press, 1989, 422 pp.]
Abraham Lincoln (quoted in the Washington Spectator, 25, #8,
1999):
"[The Civil War] has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic, but I
see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me
to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its
reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is
aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." [Maybe Mr. Lincoln
can entice you to read Corporate
Predators.]
Attention:
"...the strongest predictor of earnings nine years after
graduation from high school is the number of mathematics courses taken
(after having taken into account demographic factors) (NCTM, 1992, 3)."
(source, and a a local copy)
William Shakespeare (from As You Like It):
"All the world's a stage,
And the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...."
W. Somerset Maugham:
"It is a great nuisance that knowledge can only be obtained by hard
work."
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"
Albert Einstein
"Never memorize what you can look up in books."
(I heard it, then looked it up and found it quoted on a Library of Congress website -- figured that was good enough.)
Henry Kissinger
"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's just too
much fraternizing with the enemy."
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th US President:
"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three
decades, the Asian values of our parents generation -- work hard, study, save,
invest, live within your means -- have given way to subprime values: "You can
have the American dream -- a house -- with no money down and no payments for
two years."
Here's George Bush on the campaign trail in 2004 (cited in the Washington Spectator, 6/1/2006): "A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror. And that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country."
Website maintained by Andy Long.
Comments appreciated.
