One more post up over yonder

Go check it out.

Race – An Essay Question

Haven’t posted on DKos in a while (or here for that matter). Here is my latest: race.

McCarthy, Commies and the Right – Updated

Update 2- Apparently I’m not that the only one that noticed this trend.

It occurred to me today that Joseph McCarthy was right, he was just several decades off and looking at the wrong people. Communist sympathizers have infiltrated our nation. They are subverting our democracy. They just wear business suits instead of Mao caps.

A guy I work with is heading to China next week as part of the MBA program at UT. Now, why would an American business student be going to a communist country? And don’t give me that “New China” crap. They are still very much a repressive, anti-democratic government who just happened to figure out that instead of trying to counter capitalism it would be easier to just take it over. American corporations move jobs there because of two things: cheap (slave) labor and no environmental regulations. And why are those laborers so cheap and that land so dirty? Because the fucking communist government kills you or ships you off to do hard labor if you complain.

No unions. But aren’t those for commies? If they were China would be full of them (and don’t try to pretend that the ACFTU is looking out for anyone but those in charge). But the exact opposite is true. It is because of the unions that we have any rights in the work place at all. I have heard both republicans and democrats say that we are payed too much, that we have too much of a sense of entitlement. So wanting basic dignity and a living wage are bad things? Would you prefer a cardboard box, 7 day work weeks with 16 hour days and working along side your children in the factories?

So why do US business students get sent to the land of communism? Because its cool now that the business community and the commies have figured out how to make money together. Slave labor? No big deal. They are working on that here now anyways. Busting the unions one state at a time; saying even a minimum wage is horrible, fighting every regulation, lobbying to have free reign in the democratic process, to not pay any taxes and to make it impossible to be held accountable in the courts. But if you fuck up, if you miss a payment or loose your home because some corporation figured out they can increase their profits by shipping your job to China so a slave can do it for a hell of a lot cheaper, well, you are a fucking inferior entitlement baby who deserves to be destitute because god must hate you.

So China is cool now. And McCarthy was right. The commies are destroying America. And we are doing everything we can to help them. We even send our future business leaders there to be indoctrinated in the glories of communism now. Reagan would be so pleased.

And the worst part to me is that the Tea Party, those that claim the mantel of true patriots, the real Americans, are the biggest supporters of the whole thing. They are so pro-business, so anti-equality, that they are tripping over themselves to elect the most pro-commie people they can find. Hell, throw in the Christian Reconstructionists working so hard to try to morally justify slavery and one would think that the vast right wing conspiracy is real and happening around us right this very moment…..

Now, you might say that they are actually trying to be fascists, or aristocrats, and well that is probably also true. Learning to take the best parts from all forms of repressive government isn’t a bad strategy. But communism has shown them the way to power. Sure the investor class would no doubt say they hate communism if asked. But they do love that cheap labor. Labor that can’t complain, can’t fight back. Labor that is so easily replaced. And they would definitely say they don’t want communism in America. Just the good parts that make business better. And by better of course I mean more profitable.

So again I ask, why would American business students be sent to a communist country? What can they really learn? What about efficiency, business models, things like that? It’s all only profitable because no one can say anything that upsets the party leaders. It only works because of the repression. It is only profitable to do business in China because of the communist governmental policies that keep people from speaking out. And that means a corporation can run you into the ground for a buck and there’s nothing you can do about it. Say hello to our future America. That’s what you voted for, and that is what you are getting.

Update – I think it ironic that we fought so hard to get the rights we claim to cherish and now we are doing our best to not just finance but model the policies of a country that is opposed to those very rights.

War on Terror Report Card

Tom Engelhardt over at his site TomDispatch gives us a breakdown of the War on Terror waged by BushCo for the last 7 years. Short version, we get an F for failure. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, links and all. Tom’s site is one of the most informative out there, and his guest writers seem to always pretty much nail it, what ever the subject.

I would just add that we are at the end of America as the “Most Chosen Nation”. We are quickly becoming irrelevant, a joke, a sad caricature of greed and lust still clinging to the hope of an empire along the lines of Rome or Britain in its hay day. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it’s time we as Americans except the fact that we have been riding the victory of WWII, when we were the only industrialized power left, and that the rest of the world is finally caught up with us. The idea of empire building in this day and age doesn’t work, people are too connected now. And as the financial mess shows us, and history as well, things too big to fail always do.

This country needs to get over the idea that we are somehow “Chosen” and except that we are only 1 out of every 20 people. Instead of forcing our views on them, it would be wiser to learn their views and trying sharing the planet and its resources. Humanity as a whole needs to learn that we are all there is out there, we are all in this together, and we have all we need right here on this little planet we call Earth. We can either continue to fight over it till there is nothing left to fight over or we can learn to appreciate each other for who we are and realize that we never left Eden, it’s all around us.

What this has to do with America is that our Republic could be a great model for others if we could get it to work like it’s supposed to. We are all supposed to have a voice, a vote, an interest in the system working. Instead we have countless laws, regulations and hurdles that keep most of us from even wanting to try and participate. What we end up with is an elite few gaming the system for themselves while the fringe elements work to divide the citizenry through the political parties and the media.

I read the other day that countries are no longer turning to our courts to learn about democracy because we have slipped so far away from our roots and into violating the very human rights we claim to promote. This doesn’t surprise me at all considering how we imprison millions of Americans for activities that our government has no business making illegal in the first place. We have created a prison system that needs mandatory sentencing to justify itself, turned our police departments into paramilitary units and have thrown out the notion of innocent until proven guilty. We seem to have no problem spending an ever larger percentage of our tax dollars on super-mega prisons but we balk at pay raises for teachers, after school programs, extracurricular activities; you know, the things that might give kids something to do so their not bored enough to get in trouble in the first place.

This attitude extends to our foreign policy. Both candidates for president want to expand our military, which we already spend a third of our budget on now. Why? Why do we need more bases overseas, more weapons systems, more wars? Wouldn’t it be wiser to tone down our bravado and try talking with the rest of the world? I know, that’s surrender monkey talk. Real men kill them all and let god sort them out. I guess George Washington wasn’t a real man then: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Yep, he sure hated America.

We have a president who said Saddam Hussein was evil because he had people tortured, and then we learn we are doing the same thing in the very same prison in Iraq. We all watched the twin towers fall in horror, killing thousands, yet our own military has killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and do we feel the same horror and disgust? Even now we are bombing civilians in Pakistan with drone aircraft, robot warriors out of science fiction. What could be more terrifying then knowing that there are countless drones flying over head and at the whim of someone far away one of them will unleash death upon your home and you won’t even have the chance to flee for your life?

The worst part to me is that our push for ever more destructive weapons drives the rest of the world to develop something to counter them. Iran may very well want nukes, and why not since Israel got them from us and is an aggressor nation just like us. We are systematically arming countless dictatorships around the world all the while claiming to be spreading “Democracy”. That is, as long as your democracy is favorable to our business interests. Don’t dare want to help your own people or you will get a visit from our illustrious covert ops.

Our War on Terror would be better labeled a War of Terror. We are far better at terrorizing humanity then a bunch of guys in the desert waste lands. Our government has used this war as cover to spread across the globe, and anyone who dares to protest quickly gets labeled a terrorist, making it impossible for them to do business and putting a price on their head.

What a sad reality for a country that claims to be a beacon of hope and a bastion of liberty.

Holy Racist, Glen “I am god” Beck

My oh my. While driving earlier today I thought, “Let’s see what the Right is saying about the debate tonite” and flipped my radio over to our local hate radio station. The Glen “I’m the savior” Beck show was on. Wow.

I came in right at the end of Glen “I’m the messiah” Beck talking to an “Obama supporter”. Right, I’m sure that’s true. Anyhow, Glen “I will save you all” Beck went into a rant about how Obama wants to be our slave master and will put us to the whip and more I can’t remember but it followed along those lines. Then He “who is apparently the chosen one” Beck went into a rant about how we are all about to become socialists because of Obama.

Now, funny thing is I went to His “Holiness” Beck’s site to find a transcript and I can find the “Obama supporter” gag call and the socialist rant, but the interlude is no where to be found. Funny that. I guess even Glen “The Chosen One” Beck won’t put his racism on ine for the world to see.

And in case you don’t get the messiah shit, just listen to Glen “I am god” Beck once. He thinks he is the lone voice trying to “save” us all. In reality he is a sad, angry little man who could use a kick or two to the head. I’d like to volunteer for that job.

Mother Nature is coming for our freedoms!

For those of you that read annatopia, you may remember that I used to wage a one man war of words with the terrorist that is Mother Nature. Using the powerful tool of free speech called amongst those in the know as a blog, I dared to call attention to the hideousness and cruelty that is Mother Nature’s ideology of terror and fear. Valiantly, bravely, handsomely, I stood alone like an unbending reed against the hurricane force winds of fear, denying that fiend her control over the hearts and minds of my dear patriot-readership. That’s right, I’m a true American hero!

Speaking of hurricane force winds, it seems Mother Nature has decided to use her latest weapon of mass destruction, the Loop Current of Doom, to disrupt the entire democratic process of our proud nation! Right in between the conventions of our two political parties, when citizens should be sitting on their front porches discussing the merits of party platforms and who would be the hotter first lady, this Loop Current of Doom is being used to generate terrifying super storms aimed at our gulf coast.

As this is being written, or typed I guess, actionable intelligence points to an imminent attack somewhere along the gulf coast between Galveston, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. The press, being blind to Mother Nature’s obvious involvement in this – some would even say complicit in covering up the true nature of the threat – is still talking about this as if it’s just some wind and rain naturally drifting along and that it’s timing with the conventions is just coincidence.

For the record I am beginning to question the patriotism of Meteorologists.

This first attack wave – codenamed Gustav (commie sounding isn’t it?) – is reportedly about to link up with the Loop Current of Doom. Top secret sources are claiming that once the “hurricane” Gustav acquires this new weapon of mass destruction, the next phase of the terror attack begins: a suicide mission headed straight for us! And if that isn’t enough, there are reports of chatter indicating several other sleeper cell attack waves being activated from the Caribbean to Africa!

Now, we can either run from this like cowards and leave it up to our inept government to stop this and future attacks, or we can rise to the challenge like our Founding Fathers did and face this terror threat with courage. Before you decide, think about how they handled the terror-flooding of our midwest earlier this year… standing idly by while citizens homes and farms were flooded by Mother Nature’s Storm Forces. Our government didn’t fire a shot at those storms – not one single bullet. This is insane. The terrorists were right there overhead raining down destruction and our armed forces were forced to fill sand bags instead of fighting. WTF?

This time things will be different because I have a plan. As I understand it, the Loop Current of Doom works by using hot water in the Gulf of Mexico. So obviously what we need then is ice and lots of it. I’m talking truck loads, train loads, boat loads; this is the real deal people, we need to chill the Gulf of Mexico to the point that it will keep your Corona cold. This will render the Loop Current of Doom useless and then our forces can engage the weaker Gustav forces in a surprise shock and awe attack!

Empty your freezer trays, head to the store and get some bags; bring all the ice you can find immediately to the gulf coast and stand strong against terror! If every citizen does their part, we can stop this ourselves and we can show Mother Nature that Americans don’t take shit from anyone, especially not freedom hating terrorists!

Operation “Big Chill” is on people! America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the tide on the terrorist freedom haters. Our time to bring new energy and lots of ice – seriously we need tons of ice – to the challenge we face. Our time to offer defense for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations in acquiring ice. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people, and their endless supply of ice trays. Because if we are willing to work for it and fight for it and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to fight back against Mother Nature’s reign of terror; this was the moment when we started winning this war on nature and our planet began to be safe again; this was the moment when we started a war to end all wars and secured our nation and restored our image as the biggest, baddest nation on earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to defend this great nation so that it may always be full of freedom, bald eagles and political conventions. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

It never ends

I am not one to believe there was a happier time in the past when everything was wonderful and peachy. That would be what conservatives believe. What I want to see is some sense of planning for a future that doesn’t suck as bad as the present. Is that really too much to ask for? The short answer is unfortunately yes.

Why? Well, for starters we still live in a world where a majority of people believe in fairy tales. And the fairy tale that most folks in this corner of the globe believe in doesn’t have an ending that would lead one to care about tomorrow. Quite the opposite really. Why conserve, why take care of the planet when the flying spaghetti monster is just going to come and make it all paradise-y again anyway? In the end it gets a “reset” and its happy times forever. With that as the end all be all of their faith, is it any wonder there is such a backlash against saving our planet and in effect ourselves? Because only the flying spaghetti monster can save us.

Religion teaches you to not accept responsibility for your actions (it’s the devil’s fault), not to fix things for yourself (just pray and put it in the flying spaghetti monster’s hands), to hate all those that won’t buy in to your “faith”, and to feel all self righteous because you will get the biggest house on the block in fairy tale paradise land. Well good for you. In the mean time all these insanely huge mega-churches sure would house a lot of poor people.

But religion isn’t the real problem here. No, it’s that the masses keep taking the bait, keep fighting the wars, keep propping up the institutions that keep the rich and powerful, well, rich and powerful. We are our own worse enemy. Every damn one of us. We believe in nations, we accept the money driven economy, we keep allowing ourselves to be divided and conquered. Religion is just a tool, as are nationalism and patriotism, to keep us all so busy hating each other that we never notice that we are being played the fools.

We are rallied around flags, told stories of the heroism of our ancestors, and are then sent off to kill total strangers. And we do it with zeal. We go to work every day and piss away our lives so that we can scrape together just enough crap to feel we are “successful”. We are fed countless lies about how we need politicians to run our lives and we believe it, not because we necessarily want to, but because it’s so much easier then thinking for ourselves. Let someone else deal with it all, put your faith in the flying spaghetti monster, in the president/king, in Wall Street.

It never ends. The masses have always been stupid. And because of that we deserve to die in wars, we deserve to slave away for scraps, and we deserve to perish when the environment finally flips out. That sounds so rough, so fatalistic. Doesn’t make it any less true.

We deserve everything that comes our way because we make our own reality. Every one of us is part of the whole, and how we collectively act is the deciding factor in what we collectively sow.

Forgot to post this the other day

Don’t you just hate those damn chain emails? I know I do. Here is an example of the worst kind.

More below the fold……….

Happy First Friday Of 2007!

It’s the first of many to come. I hope. After all, Bush is still the president for two more years.

Which leads straight to Iran. There is one carrier group in the Persian Gulf right now and another on the way. Bush just named a navy admiral with a history of air campaigns, not ground combat, head of CENTCOM.

Why? Can anyone smell an invasion? A surge of troops, a bunch of ships, sounds like the right combination. I had this crazy thought when reading the BBC article that Bush will announce the invasion has began during the next SOTU speech. I can almost see it now, Bush grinning and beaming as he announces, after a good half hour of reminding the American people of 9-11 and terror, that even as he speaks US military aircraft are hitting targets in Iran while navy shelling rains down. US troops on the ground have been stationed along the southern boarder to protect vital supply lines from Kuwait. Bush declares that Iranian terror must be stopped and he is the Stopperer. The Republicans, and Liebermann, stand and cheer while the Dems sit in astounded silence.

I really need to quit watching the news. It’s making me paranoid. I mean, our president wouldn’t invade another country on false pretexts, would he?

A chill just ran down my spine. Anyhow, in other news, the mayor of NY is happy to pose with a black man the NYPD didn’t shoot.

As for the Dems taking control of Congress yesterday, I hope they have the courage and commitment to fight like hell no matter what the Repubs and the MSM throw at them. And a special congrads to Nancy Pelosi for becoming the first female Speaker of the House. It’s great that she is the Speaker, for many reasons, but it’s also pretty fucked up that it took over 200 years for a supposedly free and democratic nation to finally have a female in the position. Regardless, I am thrilled for her and for all my sisters that the “marble ceiling” has been broken. About fucking time!

Watching the Special Order speeches on CSPAN last night was a hoot. This jackass from North Carolina, Patrick McHenry, was going on and on about how Anti-Christ Pelosi and the Demoncrats (whose album, “We won, so suck a nut!” comes out this spring) were evil incarnate because they dared to use the same strong arm tactics on the Republicans that the Repubs had been using on the Dems for years. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Meanwhile the hanging of Saddam solved nothing and did nothing to stem the violence, the Civil War, in Iraq. Thank god we got him though, because now at least the 9-11 victims can rest in peace and their families can have closure knowing the man responsible for their loved ones’ murders is dead.

…………………………………….

Seriously though, what our country has just done is unravel the very idea of sovereignty. Regardless of what anyone thought of Saddam the fact is our government turned its back to the international community, a community that had recently opened its heart to a wounded nation, and invaded another nation, disposed its leader, disbanded its military, and then imprisoned or killed anyone who tried to stop them, even sanctioning the lynching of its leader.

This administration has tortured, murdered and oppressed the Iraqi (and Afghani) people now for longer then it took us to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They do it all under the cover of a generic war on terror, or the spread of democracy, or what ever the reason is today, while at the same time eroding civil liberties here at home.

George Bush has proven to the world that he neither cares for the sovereignty of other nations or the rights of the citizens this republic. Just look at what has happened to Jose Padilla. The man, an American citizen, has been driven crazy by torture this government administered. Or for that matter to the Iraqis tortured in Saddam’s old torture prisons by US personnel. Or to those in Guantanamo Bay, or to those in secret or even not so secret prisons around the world. Never mind the illegal wire taps and opening of mail. Is it any wonder the international community is afraid of Bush? If this is how he treats this country, just imagine what he can do for yours!

Bush has opened the door of preemptive strikes, letting the world know that if he doesn’t like you, prepare for a visit from the US military. And he continues to do so even as the American public calls for an end to the war in Iraq.

Human life means nothing to George Bush. Neither do liberty or freedom. And he is our president. Does human life mean nothing to us? Have we turned our backs on the beliefs expressed in the Constitution? I believe Bush quit representing the interests of this country the day he was sworn in. Now the world is paying the price for the ignorance, the utter disregard for reality, of the voting public who elected this fool not once but twice.

What can we the people do to stop the insane policies of this mad man? Can the Democrats reign in a president gone crazy with power? I sure hope so. Not just for the sake of this nation but for humanity as well.

…………………………………………………….

Happy Friday! Don’t worry, it ain’t so bad. We can only invade so many countries in two years, maybe start a world war. No big deal. So, what else is going on out there? Anyone?

Iraq: get the fuck out. Now.

Ok, time for a “reality check” for the reality based community. We need to get the fuck out of Iraq now. Pull every single troop out, every contract killer, every trainer, everyone.

We should have never gone in at all. I never supported the invasion. I thought it was foolish and dangerous when we invaded Iraq in 2003. I never trusted or believed this administration, but many of you were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because you learned nothing from our invasion of Vietnam or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Well now it seems Americans are waking up to the realities of war. Wonderful. Thank you for pulling your heads out of your asses. Once again, too little too late America.

Invading another country takes commitment and brutal, murderous force. Think back to the colonial days, or even the ancient empire days. You have to be prepared to kill until the populace will is broken. And then you have to be prepared to keep killing anyone who dares to even think about resisting. You have to be prepared to take control and force your will through murder.

Now, you might be thinking “What about WWII?’ We bombed Germany to rubble, killing everyone and anyone with our carpet bombing. We were relentless, brutal. We destroyed city after city, reducing them to piles of rubble. If you think we only targeted the military industrial complex, you are naive. We did the same in Japan.

The biggest difference between those two countries and Iraq is that there were governments in those countries that people were loyal to in the first place. So when the governments finally fell, when there was nothing left to do but surrender, the wars ended. The general populace was so devastated they could not resist any longer. But in Iraq there was no real wide spread loyalty to Saddam. The populace had its own agenda from the start. So when we took Saddam out, every other agenda came into play. But we didn’t bomb the place to rubble to subdue them. You might say 600,000 dead is a lot, but we didn’t really go into it with the same murderous zeal we used in WWII.

We have never been in the position to force a government upon the Iraqi people. For starters, we have never understood the divisions that existed long before the British made Iraq the country it is, long before Saddam. We didn’t go in with a real conquering force, that could kill and kill until the populace will was broken.

The Iraq War has been a failure because we haven’t fought it like a real war. Bush tells us we are liberators, that we are there to give Iraq freedom. Besides being utter bullshit, that statement also means nothing in regards to war. War is about winners and losers. There is an enemy, and the war ends only when one side runs away or is obliterated. That is the lesson of Vietnam. We ran away because the Vietnamese were willing to keep throwing bodies at us, no matter the cost in lives, no matter the destruction. For our part we were not willing to win at any cost.

Now we face the same reality in Iraq. We are either committed to the whole sale destruction of the country to destroy the public will or we leave. All this talk about setting up governments, about spreading freedom, is worthless crap and shows the complete lack of understanding the American people have about the realities of war. We dropped atomic bombs on Japan and may very well have done the same in Germany because we were willing to win at any cost. We stopped in Korea without going the the last mile and look where we are today, still sitting on the 38th parallel.

I am not for the destruction of Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter. But just like Iraq, Afghanistan continues to haunt us, even if the media ignores it. The Taliban is regaining momentum because we didn’t complete the war, because we shifted our attention to Iraq. We are making the same mistake the Soviets did.

We won Desert Storm because there was a clear objective: kick Iraq out of Kuwait. Mission accomplished, we left victorious. But now we are trapped in a vicious cycle of lies and propaganda by our own government telling us we are the police of the world and have a duty to spread freedom across the globe while at the same time defeating an obscure enemy and something as yet completely defined called terrorism.

Well folks, we have two choices. We either commit to war for war’s sake or we go home. We are either prepared to level every city and kill every person or we are not. War is not a fucking game. You kill until a defined enemy has no choice but to surrender and submit or is destroyed completely.

War is not about liberation, it is about victory or defeat. Our military exists to protect us from those that would destroy us. It was never intended to play the role of police force. Without a clear objective, our military forces cannot operate effectively. Our soldiers are dying every day for no reason, fighting with no greater purpose.

All this talk by our politicians about gradual withdraw or staying the course is insane. We need to leave now or commit completely. If we stay, we need to be prepared to win at any cost. But that would also require a defined enemy, a clear objective and an obtainable victory. Who are we fighting? Where are we fighting? For what purpose? The global war on terror, like the Iraq war, provides no answers to these questions.

Iraq is falling into chaos. Are we prepared to stop that chaos through brutal force? Are we prepared to commit to a global war against an ever growing mass of people that see us as an aggressor nation? Are we as a nation committed to winning at any cost? If not then we need to bring our troops home now. War is not a game, real people are dying. The longer we pretend like we are liberators the worse it will get.