They have not won.

"Like all fascists, they know that if they can just convince you that the fight is already lost, they win." 

Discussion thread here.

It's happening already

Quoting the Daily Kos: (read this article in full!)

As John Nichols put it this week in The Nation, the Republican Party is no longer a political “party” per se, but a mere vehicle, a conspiracy for seizing and holding power on behalf of a tiny sliver of the wealthiest among us. If that wasn’t evident from the grotesquely skewed tax cut inflicted on the American population in 2016—the sole “achievement” of the Republicans’ entire tenure in this Congress-- then the assaults on Democracy underway in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina prove it beyond any doubt, as gerrymandered Republican legislators working in the dark hours of the night hastily rewrite the powers afforded to their newly-elected Democratic state governors.  An insolent autocracy heedless to the interests or well-being of the American people is no longer “creeping”  into government from the shadows. Let’s be clear: it is upon us.

When you privatize prisons

You'll do anything to fill your cells.

Because bullies grow up to be CEOs and legislators

And people in power...

Where there is money or power...

There will be people figuring out ways to take it...

Going after public education.  Because that's where there's money to be had.

Vouchers sound like such a nice plan.  Because that's where there's money to be had.

The 99.9% can easily be squeezed for more.  Because that's how the .1% make their money.

Reoccupying your foreclosed house.  Because that's where the banks played fast and loose with your home.

Beating the tar out of the camping Occupy protesters instead of the teabaggers or overnight shoppers.  Because they are the biggest threat to the people who hold power.

Excellent story by a jailed journalist

Who tried to interview the pepper-sprayed women and was arrested. I think the NYPD will regret this....

Explaining Granddad Prescott Bush's legacy

Via Michael of Cannablog:








Wikipedia:

The Business Plot (also known as the Plot Against FDR or the White House Putsch) was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 in which several wealthy businessmen allegedly planned to overthrow the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Details of the alleged plot came to light in early 1934, when retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee.^[1] In his testimony, Butler claimed that a group of men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a military coup. One of the alleged plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their final report, the Congressional committee supported some of Butler's allegations,^[2] but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten.

Prescott Bush found this man:



a threat to his way of life. Which might explain why this man said this:

Wasn't it obvious to everyone?

George Bush being an anomaly, I mean...

Scholars who study the role of religion in politics now say it is possible that the Bush years were an anomaly and that evangelicals, of whom religious conservatives are only a subset, could find themselves back where they were before — divided among themselves and just one of many interest groups vying for attention.

“It’s not so much that evangelicals are more divided than they were before, it’s that Bush himself was a unique candidate,” said Corwin E. Smidt, director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College, an evangelical school in Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’s partly going back to previous patterns.”

And that stings. Religious conservatives were alarmed last month when none of the Republican front-runners showed up for the Values Voter Debate Straw Poll in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. More than 40 groups, some of them major organizations known for their capacity to mobilize voters, had put together the event. Questions were directed even at the no-show candidates, and many of those questions were angry.

“Beyond their cowardice, there’s an arrogance on the part of these candidates,” said Janet L. Folger, the president of Faith2Action, who helped organize the debate. “The arrogance is this: ‘We are just taking your votes for granted. You have nowhere else to go.’ ”

The fundamentalists have tasted power, walked in the halls of government, had conversations with the ruling elite. They will not go quietly. They were this close!

But then, we have politicians still getting into verbal contortions to win their votes:

JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

[snip]

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.

The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.

Paying compensation forever

Canada pays compensation to those Native Americans who suffered in abusive government run schools:

In a move hailed by one native leader as a "turning point in the history of our nation," Canada on Wednesday formalized a landmark compensation deal for an estimated 80,000 former residential school students.

The country's largest-ever class-action settlement came into effect, ending what Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine called a 150-year "journey of tears, hardship and pain — but also of tremendous struggle and accomplishment."

[snip]

Thousands of the former students say they endured sexual, physical and psychological abuse while attending the schools, which were run by churches and funded by the federal government from the 1870s until the mid-1970s.

The federal government-approved agreement will provide at least $1.9 billion to the former students who had attended 130 schools.

[snip]

Still, not all survivors have opted to take the lump sum. A group of about 200 people who endured very serious abuse and trauma have rejected the cash, choosing instead to take the federal government and religious organizations to court for running the institutions.

Many people who have said the financial compensation cannot heal their emotional wounds can seek support from a truth and reconciliation commission, which was set up as part of the settlement agreement process. It allows people to share their experiences in the schools and put them on the record.

So how many years are going to go by before we find ourselves paying compensation for suffering by these people: (found via Steve Bates at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat) :

The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.

Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind." Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the military calls the "House of Wisdom."

The religious courses are led by Muslim clerics who "teach out of a moderate doctrine," Stone said, according to the transcript of a conference call he held from Baghdad with a group of defense bloggers. Such schooling "tears apart" the arguments of al-Qaeda, such as "Let's kill innocents," and helps to "bring some of the edge off" the detainees, he said.

Detainees the age of 11? Should we ask if anyone running this House of Wisdom can actually speak the native language? How do they verify what is being taught to whom? And who the hell thinks that 'bending them back to our will' is a good thing? Who the hell is in charge of this horror? WTF??

More is always better

Via Joe Sudbay of the AMERICAblog, the Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney's top lawyer pushed relentlessly to expand the powers of the executive branch and repeatedly derailed efforts to obtain congressional approval for aggressive anti-terrorism policies for fear that even a Republican majority might say no, according to a new book written by a former senior Justice Department official.

David S. Addington, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, viewed both U.S. lawmakers and overseas allies with "hostility" and repeatedly opposed efforts by other administration lawyers to soften counterterrorism policies or seek outside support, according to Jack L. Goldsmith, who frequently clashed with Addington while serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004.

I think this article needs this pic:

When you decide to sabotage a peaceful anti-SPP protest with undercover provocateurs

Change your fricking Canadian police issue boots.

Chet Scoville at Vanity Press catches the video:

OTTAWA – Protesters are accusing police of using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North American leaders' summit in Montebello, Que.

Such accusations have been made before after similar demonstrations but this time the alleged "agents provocateurs" have been caught on camera.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.

Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.

Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot.

And here is the photo:



Chet has more links listed.

Cheney pretends to throw in the towel but...

Continues to do what he wants to do.



Kinda like a deep sea creature that looks like it's cornered then suddenly disappears in a cloud of ink....



From Kagro X at Daily Kos:

How exactly is a letter saying the Archivist has no authority to make the OVP comply with this executive order "throwing in the towel?" Did someone in the White House tell Allen that, and so he just wrote it down? Did they just "Healthy Forest" us here? "We're throwing in the towel! Except for the part about the towel. And throwing it."

But wait! Here is Shadowy Dick lurking in the White House and talking about the executive duties of the VP!

*GASP* And here is proof that Shadowy Dick lets spies run rampant through his office!

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat has the links to the Washington Post's expose on Shadowy Dick's takeover of all branches of the Bush administration. The man has obviously been lusting after absolute power for years and Georgie was too stupid to block his power grab.



Just what the hell has been going on in Shadowy Dick's office? Has he forgotten he works for us? He's an EMPLOYEE of the government?



Of course not. He thinks he is owed this power after having to wait so long to get his hands on it...

Update: Defunding the Dick:

The Democrats are going to call Dick Cheney’s bluff this coming Thursday by using his own logic to justify cutting of funds to his offices, according to Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) who joined Keith Olbermann on Tuesday’s “Countdown.” Emanuel points out that defunding the Vice President’s office would save American taxpayers some $4.5 million dollars. And we know George Bush never met a tax cut he didn’t like, right?

The more things change

The more they stay the same. (Quote found at the Next Hurrah.)

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. May 1974 (my bold)

[The President's] all-purpose incantation of national security as an inherent and absolute Presidential right, whatever the surrounding circumstances, a right to be exercised in secret at Presidential pleasure without accountability to Congress and the people, surely represents an extraordinary violation of public trust. Some of his own people have begun to understand this now, even though [the President] himself thus far has shown not the slightest evidence of comprehension, repentance, or even passing regret. "The key," [a penitent aide] recently said, "is the effect that the term 'national security' had on my judgment. The very words served to block critical analysis. It seemed at least presumptuous if not unpatriotic to inquire into just what the significance of 'national security' was." If [the President] is not impeached, it will be a message from Congress to future Presidents that they can define national security as they wish, share their definition with no one, and do whatever they claim national security requires. It will be difficult for future Congresses to object when future Presidents act upon the powerful precedent [the President] will thus have established.

Who says there isn't a reset button. We're living Watergate all over again.....

Falwell arriving at the pearly gates

Uh oh, Tinky Winky....


(pic stolen from here.)

Update 5/29: We need a poem to honor this event:
Steve Bates said...

Jerry Scary

Children, see the Teletubby:
Rather stubby,
Kinda chubby.
Never snobby, never clubby.

Has a TV in its tummy:
Never crummy,
Never scummy;
Doesn't look a lot like Mummy.

Has a 'tenny on the toppy:
Though he's sloppy,
Dances choppy,
One would not mistake for Poppy.

Children, now let's look at Jerry:
Jerry's wary,
Jerry's scary;
Calls our Tinky Winky "fairy."

Doesn't like our Tinky's baggy,
Calls him "faggy,"
Calls him "draggy,"
Calls him everything but "Maggie."

Jerry's preachy on the tubey:
Hates kids who be
Just like you be;
'Specially kids who might a Jew be.

Children, do not be like Jerry:
Leery, wary,
Chary, scary.
Lovey-dovey has he nary.

Better take your cue from Tinky:
Smiley, Winky,
Kindly thinky;
Next to Tinky, Jerry's stinky!

Hate's infectious, like a scabie:
You had maybe
Better gay be
Than to hate a 'tubby baby!

- SBtheYDD
2/9/1999
(From Steve Bates at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat)

Christianists once allowed into the halls of power

Will not leave. They have come too far to let it go now!



Update: link isn't working. Found these links:
"The Rise of Dominionism"
Recorded October 11, 2004, 44 minutes

Play the Real Video version. Works best on faster connections. Dialup users can try the audio only version below.

Play the (Windows) WMV Video version. This is a full motion, but low resolution video for 256Kbps or faster connections.

View the QuickTime Video version.

(Check the TheocracyWatch Materials page to get a copy of this video on DVD or videotape.)

If these links fail, go to this site.

The fall of the Roman Empire

Told in modern times is about the United States. Have we totally lost our ethics, our Constitution, our Republic, and our way?: (my bold)

If these people actually believe a presidential election a year and a half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, [1] puts it: "None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances ... The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them."

Republican President George W Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution", and the opposition Democratic Party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the president and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the CIA knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify a US war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the US constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition", in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in such countries as Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-September 11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on US citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the US constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface. And yet, on the eve of the national elections last November, then House minority leader, now Speaker, Nancy Pelosi pledged on the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) News program 60 Minutes that "impeachment is off the table". She called it "a waste of time". And six months after the Democratic Party took control of both houses of Congress, the prison at Guantanamo Bay was still open and conducting drumhead courts-martial of the prisoners held there; the CIA was still using "enhanced interrogation techniques" on prisoners in foreign jails; illegal intrusions into the privacy of US citizens continued unabated; and, more than 50 years after the CIA was founded, it continues to operate under, at best, the most perfunctory congressional oversight.

Will the next president be strong enough to give up what Bush and Cheney have taken from us? Can the next administration step back from Iraq and the possession of such a prize as the immense oil fields of Iraq, even though they are the resources of another sovereign country? Can they let go of such power over the citizens and voters of this country by letting go the Patriot Act and Gitmo? Will they be strong enough to restore to us Habeas Corpus? The Geneva Convention? The Kyoto Protocol?

Or are we unable now to stop the slide into the abyss no matter who is in the White House?

9/11 empowered the little guys dreaming of immense powers

And what ends up happening are events like this. A photographer being harassed by an overly aggressive cop in San Antonio:

A few frames later, a man approached out of the corner of my eye (in plain clothes) and said,

"Can I see some ID?"

My instinctive response, before I saw what he was holding, was "no."

As he shouted, "I better or you're goin' t' jaail!", I noticed he was displaying in his hand some sort of police identification.

Finding him unusually aggressive, noting his weapon and ID, and hearing his threat of arrest if I did not produce identification, I decided to show him my license.

"Are you taking pictures for personal use or a company?"

"Well, it depends.. probably personal, but I suppose if someone wants to run them, they can... why?"

(getting in my face) "You ever hear of September the 11th?"

"Uhhh, yeah, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this."

"You are between two buildings, housin' communications equipment."

"OK... and I am in a public place, taking pictures of things in plain view. There's nothing secret or sensitive here. I mean, if I had criminal intent, do you really think I'd be out here in the open like this taking photos?"

"You'd be surprised."

"I would? Have you ever caught such a person?"

As he began a call on his cell phone (my license in hand) and talked (or pretended to talk) with someone, I noticed a news crew setting up about 50 meters away. He ended his call shortly thereafter and our conversation continued.

"How do I know you're not going to give these pictures to someone [to do harm]?"

"Well, I suppose you don't - but how do you plan to ascertain that by checking my identification?"

(shouting again) "LOOK - you give me any lip, and you're goin' t' jaail!"

It is so absurd it feels like a parody, but these situations are happening all about the U.S. We will not catch terrorists this way. We will just make our citizens extremely angry.

Update: This is not to control terrorists, this is to control the citizenry:

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control's list of "specially designated nationals" has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.

"The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security," said Shirin Sinnar, the report's author. "The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don't trample on individual rights."

The lawyers' committee has documented at least a dozen cases in which U.S. customers have had transactions denied or delayed because their names were a partial match with a name on the list, which runs more than 250 pages and includes 3,300 groups and individuals. No more than a handful of people on the list, available online, are U.S. citizens.

Yet anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply. The law's scope is so broad and guidance so limited that some businesses would rather deny a transaction than risk criminal penalties, the report finds.

And then you get this:

Billionaires for Bush put out a press release today in response to the news that the New York city police were spying on them:

Billionaires For Bush Respond to N.Y.P.D. Spying Report

- Billionaires to release own domestic surveillance files as gesture of good faith.

- “We guessed he was an undercover officer when he kept asking for stock tips.” Meg A Bucks, National Co-Chair.

The government demanding that you spy on your neighbor is so American

And you get to shut up about it. Via Steve Bates, War and Piece reviews an anonymous report of one who suffers under an FBI gag order:

There've been 140,000 such gag orders in this country with almost no terrorism prosecutions to show for the abuses, and no probable cause established. That is just over one for every 30,000 Americans, man woman and child. Is the gag order so the FBI can avoid accountability? So the public is not the wiser for the abuses taking place? Where are the folks with honor inside the FBI raising concerns about the abuses? Is Congress going to mandate DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine to establish whether such abuses were committed intentionally or not in the next round?

Why we always will need checks and balances

Always.

The New York Times:

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

Chet at Vanity Press notes:

You know, there's something that most civilized democracies figured out a while ago: if you give the government and its various branches unlimited power with no oversight, then the government will abuse that power. Not might abuse it -- will abuse it.