The Erosion of Civil Rights

Gonzo Goes Back to Texas - One Fascist down, at least Two More To Go

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:35:06 GMT

Gonzo goes back to Texas – Tail between his legs

I used to think that I would celebrate the moment when Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez would be revealed for the partisan destructor jurisprudenciae he is. But somehow, I just feel queasy. We came way too close to a Dictatorship under his watch to simply celebrate his return to Texas. Instead, we need to take this opportunity to make sure such a thing NEVER happens again.

First, we need to stop with this complacent attitude that the only way to maintain our freedom is to submit to police state. Nothing shouts out “totalitarianism” like random searches.

Second, we need to stop with the knee-jerk response to any criticism as an attack on our principles. This country is a plurality, not the uni-brain of a collective of thirteen year olds who think they’re grownups. Criticism is not only necessary for betterment, it is an essential element of the democratic process. Have we all forgotten about “redress of grievances”?

Third, we need to stop listening to the TV pundits who rely on their viscera rather than there intellect, and whose tiny, tiny bits of information cannot be extrapolated into a universal truth. If their knowledge were butter, all bagels would be dry, dry, dry.

Fourth, we have to get rid of the Lobby as the Fourth Branch of Government. It is simply disgusting that Healthcare and Pharma Companies dictate to the Congress, rather than the other way around. How do we do this? Let’s THINK about it. THINK.

Fifth, we have to stop acting like we’re as rich as the Inexplicably Celebrated of Hollywood, thus running up or debt as we rush to dress, act, talk, walk and live like people who are not entirely real.

Lastly, let us never again allow a man such as Gonzalez to eviscerate the Judicial Branch, bleeding it

of respectability and the balance intended by the Constitution. Let us never again allow One Party to begin to form, amoeba-like, seizing power and money and all the while attempting to convince us that the only way to be free is to submit.

We deserve better, Gonzo. We deserve the Judiciary to uphold the Constitution.

Tags: Alberto Gonzalez, Bush White House Blunders, destructor jurisprudenciae, fascism, Gonzalez scandals

The Rising Tide of Fascism in America – The Philosophy of Extra-legal Executive Power in Order to Preserve the Democracy

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:27:19 GMT

The big talk in the news today has been the recent confrontation between Senator Clinton and Robert Gates at the Pentagon. For those who missed it, it went like this:

Clinton, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, sent a request to Gates (or, Uncle Dick’s Private General) asking if the Pentagon had developed any strategies for withdrawal from Iraq (read the text of her letter on her .com website blog: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/ ) Of course, Gates didn’t deign to answer her, rather he had Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, respond to her request.

In a response that can only be viewed as the tip of the very authoritarian iceberg to come and to wreck this ship of state, Gates told Ms. Clinton that Congressional Oversight will “embolden enemies”, and he alluded to the Executive Branch’s position that Congressmen like Clinton “aid and abet” the enemy. Thus, there will be no Congressional oversight, nor will Congress be informed of the planning and strategies, not the spending of monies, nor the realities on the ground.

Dear citizens, you must realize that what we are looking at is not just another election cycle, it is not just the pendulum swinging, it is not just the status quo in the Capitol. It is the very thing that the Founding Fathers feared – failure to hang on to Democracy. The paradox we are facing is the installation of a legally sanctioned authoritarian regime in order to preserve the democracy. It’s not that the Emperor is naked. No, he has poked out our eyes.

To Quote Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

People, you are the witnesses to the birth of the modern Caesar.

Tags: authoritarian state, Benjamin Franklin, Eric Edelman, Evil Uncle Dick Cheney, Fascism, Gates, Hillary Clinton, our fascist state

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby sentenced to 30 months in Federal Prison

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:33:25 GMT

For those of you who dared to dream that the Halls of Justice were not the personal property of the Frat Boys running this country, today was a good day. It seems that lying, cheating and threatening are no longer the Teflon tools of this administration. Perhaps the ruling in this high-profile case (centered on the outing of a Bush opponent’s CIA spouse) will give future leakers pause. Putting aside the lack of morality exercised by Bush & his cohorts, and putting aside the administration’s disregard of laws and civil rights, this ruling can be seen as a scathing indictment of the recent spate of absentmindedness as a defense, first used by Regan and perfected under Bush. No one in this administration seems to remember much. It must be the White House water. All Grand Juries can expect to hear these days is a parade of witnesses who can’t seem to remember anything. What a great strategy for this modern version of poisoning.

Watching this all go down, it was striking, the change in Libby’s demeanor, from the grinning crony secure in his legal defense, to the wilted and bewildered convicted perjurer, about to be toted off to jail. If ever bravado and self congratulation drained instantly out of a man, it was there for us to see en vivo today. It was an impressive wilt, as if Libby had never even considered this trial a real game. It was in fact as if this had been make believe all along, and he was just waiting there, for someone from his cadre of so-called friends to pluck him from the scene and take him away to safety. But that did not happen, and the Grand Jury to which he lied and the American Constitution, upon which he shat, and the American People, upon whom he spat, can now have some modicum of respect for The Justice Department of Gonzalez.

But before we dance in the street to celebrate that the balances of Justices have been recalibrated, we must all remember that Bush is likely to pardon his rattled friend, to leave office with a sigh while performing that peculiar political act of benevolence, parallel to the Annulment of a Catholic marriage. It’s not the fact of consummation that is “forgiven”, but rather its intent. Bush is likely to “forgive” Libby, not for having committed perjury, but rather for failing to forget himself out of it.

Sad indeed has been the condition of this nation’s moral compass. Not only has the Bush Administration built an empire based on the notion that the ends justifies the means and that might makes right, it has also subscribed to the notion that the rest of us are dumbasses. Perhaps this ruling will be a caveat for those strategizing against the system. (Uh, Carl, Dick & friends….) Also, let us hope that this Scooter disaster has put chinks in the Rovain Armored Dream, his notion of this country as a meritocracy based on his own skewed vision of right, wrong, truth and lies. It may be too late for old Scooter, but Rove.. oh, never mind. He'll never get it.

Tags: breaking the law, Bush, Dick Cheney, Libby, Rove, Rovian dream, Scooter Libby goes to jail

Evil Uncle Dick Cheney Has His Way with Truth, Justice and the American Way, or, Dios mio! Que asco!

Fri, 18 May 2007 14:29:58 GMT

I must admit, the recent implosion of Uncle Dick’s Playhouse has been both fun and terrifying to watch. (Teddy Vargas – you are on the right track with The Museum of Intolerance.)

It is fun, for instance, to see former lackeys refuse to be the press & public’s whipping boys (I am thinking of Tenet, Comey & the Terminated 8). Even Ashcroft has come out looking good – who cannot feel some sympathy and even admiration for a man who refused to sign (while on his sickbed, even) the Evil Domestic Spying Plans of Alberto Gonzalez. Not that the lack of a signature meant that Al & Dick did not refuse to proceed with said nasty plan, anyway.

Uncle Dick’s plans to invade Iraq, take over the oil, install Halliburton as preferred vendor, subcontract security and law enforcement details to rinky-dink ad hoc companies, and so on, have fallen apart. Still, the scales refuse to fall from the eyes of Bush and those who desperately wish that he was the fine Manager of the Country that he promised to be, not the wooden dummy of Dick “Talks from Both Sides of His Mouth” Cheney.

Yes, we all did enjoy Tenet making the rounds of the chat shows, talking about how his words and those of others were duly twisted for the purpose of launching an invasion whose only objective was corporate revenge, greed, Malthusianism and the desire of a fake Texan to play cowboy at the expense of others.

It seems that no one, including “Good Old Brownie” from the Katrina Times, really wants to be hung out to dry, with nothing more than an “I don’t recall,” “I didn’t read that memo”, “the email was deleted”. Cheney and his cadre of truly-evil-doers have destroyed the lives of many people, and ruined many personal lives, all in the name of killing off the enemy (here defined as anyone in opposition to their very narrow-minded, anti-constitutional objectives).

So, it is fun to see these Hellhounds all falling over themselves to claim that their honor, their fides atque auctoritas have besmirched by well-placed adjectives and deceptive responses, if not outright lies. Yes, in fact, outright lies. Their deception has been so bold that they don’t even care if the ROC knows. No moral compass, no ethics, no real love Democracy (unless of course it is going exactly their way).

The terror I feel comes from knowing that we have come so close to a totalitarian state, that our checks and balances and civil rights have been severely mauled and partially amputated by the rabid manner in which Uncle Dick and the Bloom School have grasped at the reigns of power, have whipped people and institutions into submission, have reactivated the dead Goering School of Thought on Government.

To continue with this theme, the Big Business lobby has now secured its Guest Worker program, creating the needed Second Class person & future Scapegoat class that every totalitarian government needs. Vigilance is the only way to prevent the totalitarian state from emerging in the guise of “Right Wing Democracy”.

Tags: Alberto Gonzalez, Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, Goering and Cheney, guest worker program, Hellhounds, Justice Department, totalitarianism

Congressional Foreplay - C-Span soft-porn?

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:11:49 GMT

Watching C-Span live does have its rewards.

When Al Gore was there last week to speak on the topic of global warming, Imhofe (Republican Senator from creationist state of Oklahoma) tried to choke the speaking-air right of Gore by asking him questions and then not letting him answer. He even told GOre he was "full of crap" and that global warming was the equivalent of the propaganda of the Third Reich.

I was stunned - not because a Senator could behave so badly, they do it all the time, but rather because Inhofe was so willfully ignorant of everything in the universe and in world history, and he just couldn't help himself from putting it on record (an thus on Youtube.com).

The best part of the broadcast was when Barbara Boxer smacked Inhofe down, telling him he had to follow the rules of order and let Gore answer. Then she reminded the Dummkopf from Oklahoma that SHE was now Chairperson of the committe, a result of the Democratic process in the United States, and that he was nt making up the rules of committe.

It was great to watch and was no doubt just a preview of what we have to look forward during the upcoming election season.

Tags: Al Gore, congressional foreplay, Imhofe as Dummkopf

Judiciary Blues: Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and their Need for Secrets & Lies

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:32:56 GMT

That’s the song the White House is singing these days, at least in the shower of the Presidential Suite (I highly doubt that there is any music in Cheney’s lightless soul).

The mess that the Executive Branch is in at the moment is really of their own making, the result of trying to run a country from a Frat House, just one step removed from Animal House. Yes, the ugliest aspects of America are defining not only our world image but also our policies and some new & teisted version of the Constitution.

Rather than serve the American People and Constitution, the Bush Administration has constantly and with self-righteous indignation, operated as though the Democrats were the enemy. In fact, former Senate Majority leader Tom DeLay referred to Democrats as “the enemy” and refused to talk to any lobbyist who had a Democrat’s ear, stating, that he would not treat “with the enemy”. It is disturbing to think that the White House and its cadre of less-than-stellar thinkers have created and executed policy on an Us v. Them basis, as if their greatest concern were eliminating the competition rather than the terrorists.

Our Red State President and his entourage of mediocrity refuses to treat with the Blue State legislators, because in his White House the flag is not Red, White and Blue – it is simply Red, the color of Totalitarianism.

Tags: Blues States, Bush, Bush Totalitarianism, Cheney, Gonzalez, Red States

Bush demands tortillas, Gonzalez demands 100% loyalty

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:37:22 GMT

Our President has been touring Latin America with an agenda of good will and a demand to be fed. While steering clear of Mexico’s most famous export to American college campuses (Tequila), Bush used his “Feed Me Now” exit to escape reporters’ questions regarding the nefarious behavior of his henchman (oops! I mean devoted employee) Alberto Gonzalez.

It pains me to say it, but our highest ranking Latino/Hispanic member of the Executive Branch is now the progenitor of yet another of tank-roll of fascism down Blunder Boulevard.

In an effort to continue the Rovian dream of a Bloom-inspired political Valhalla, Gonzalez fired eight Federal Prosecutors in one fail swoop. This mass-firing was an unprecedented Executive move against the Judicial Branch.

Since Congress is no longer in Cheney and Haliburton’s back pocket, and since Haliburton has absconded to Dubai, the new Rovian strategy is to seize control of the Judicial Branch, through fear & intimidation, and of course the usual character assassination so favored by the Bush White House strategists.

And our beloved President has found new ways to evade difficult questions: answer by demanding dinner – “la cena” and ask for extra salsa on your goddamn tortillas.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, Fascism, Gonzalez, la cena, Rove, Rovian Valhalla, tortillas

Blogs that actually say something about who we are

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:52:37 GMT

Alegra’s very disturbing story (see her blog http://www.nyc.com/people/AlegraDemos/home.aspx ) got me thinking about what a truly misogynistic land this country has become. Aside from the fact the young girls are not only willing to objectify themselves for their fifteen seconds of fame, they will stand on line in order to do it, they will beg, borrow and steal and behave very, very badly for it.

It is exceedingly difficult for young girls to see that they have a worth beyond that which is tied to sexual gratification. The fact that very young girls (and sometimes their mothers) will refer to pre-pubescent clothing as “sexy” or “hot” is an indicator of how wrong things have gone when it comes to the role of the female in this society. While is true that there are more jobs out there for the professional woman (the highly educated middle class), there are fewer and fewer for the underclass female outside of some sort of menial job or one that engages in some form of sexual exploitation. This is surely an indicator that the US is moving away from an economic model based on a strong middle class and more towards one of social and economic disparity, with a very powerful elite class at the top. Economic disparity always has a disastrous effect on women – witness the unbelievably cruel and institutionalized prostitution in Eastern Europe.

But are we any better over here in the land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Our female leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, and Condoleeza Rice, are routinely made fun of for their unglamorous qualities, and yet someone as physically repulsive as Dick Cheney is never qualified based on his looks or his sexuality. Under the guise of political commentary, pundits can attack the very womanhood of a female leader in a way that these same pundits would never attack a male leader. The same holds true for wives and daughters of Presidents: it is okay to view them as sexual objects, be they attractive or repulsive. How do we value ourselves as females, how does society value us and how do we let these values live or die in our daily lives?

If in our interpersonal lives we can reduce our partners to needless objects worthy of discards, how are we treating our brethren on a wider social level? If a man and his lover can plot to have his wife committed to a mental hospital, what does that say about this culture? It says that this is the same culture where “girls gone wild” and reality TV feed us a steady stream of objectified young women willing to undergo surgery, humiliation and perversion in order to see their faces on television.

While the so-called press and the so-called news networks are busy with the salacious details of the lives of tartlets and dead centerfolds, our country’s leadership is growing ever more fascist.

Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.

Y que lastima Alegra que tuviste que sufrir así; vas mejorar, seguro que si.

Tags: deception, fascism, misogeny, pop culture, sexual objectification, sexuality

Notes from the Quagmire: Bush Proposes Massive Increase --- in Troops in Iraq… not in the Minimum Wage

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:58:18 GMT

Bush , in a speech marked more for its clarity than its jingoism, proposed to the Nation that we send 20,000 more soldiers to Iraq in order to clean up the mess that can barely be described as a functioning Nation. There is really no “Nation of Iraq” at the moment; there are only vestiges. But the Bush Plan was clear and the text of the speech marked a departure from the tired speech-making tactics that have gotten us where we are.

We are now officially quagmired, as we were in Vietnam in 1968. The rock and the hard spot are waiting to crush us. An exit now would mean certain death for hundreds of thousands of people in the region; it would mean the destruction of what little is left of the Iraqi infrastructure. The violence and rage that would ensue would be worse than what pundits have “civil war”. But to surge the troops does not seem to the answer, either. We have cornered ourselves.

An increase in the number of troops serving in Iraq will do several things. First, it will only aggravate an already difficult diplomatic position while continuing to foster hatred worldwide. Second, it will strain a military already stretched to the maximum. Third, it will require troop to endure longer postings, and repeated postings with little time to recover from the stress (for which we will continue to pay for generations). Third, it will require a full court press of military recruiters in our Nation’s most impoverished areas. At least they are not (yet) being drafted to die in a war that promises them nothing.

That fact is that the military relies on new recruits from the very people of people it once drafted. Incentives, which including signing bonuses and hazardous duty pay, constitute hard currency that many of these potential recruits could otherwise not imagine. Why work at a minimum wage in a job with little potential for growth or education, when you can sign on for a couple of grand and have someone 24/7 to give and to tell you everything you need? Why struggle in poverty if someone is offering you a sure way out?

The Minimum Wage in many areas of the country is $5.15 per hour. If an hourly worker works a full 40 hour week for 51 of the 52 weeks of the year, he/she will barely enough to be above the official poverty line (around $500 above the official number), and that is pre-tax. While military pay is so low, it barely keeps the soldier in the lower middle class. Many military personnel take part time jobs at the minimum in order to stay afloat. If you earn the minimum wage and the Military offers you $2,000 to sign on, it’s like getting a 20% bonus.

The Congress wants to increase the minimum wage to $7.25, which would put a much greater distance between the full-time worker and the poverty line. While many business owners claim that such an increase will put them out of business, the reality is that it will increase their total labor burdens by between 10% and 12%. That increase means a decrease in profits, and that means the big investment firms will be unhappy. Any pushback on the minimum wage will come from these people who buy and sell stock like a bunch of bookies. In a time when CEO’s receive shameful severance packages of 200 million dollars, our soldiers live barely above the poverty line. This is an outrageous situation and a great and shameful fistful of greed that no one else in the world can understand. And it has nothing to do with the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or Free Enterprise or Free Market Capitalism; it has everything to do with greed and American hypocrisy.

The sad fact is that the war in Iraq rests largely on the grossly underpaid shoulders of the poor and of the immigrants to the United states.

Tags: Bush, Civil War, Hazardous Duty Pay, Iraq, Iraq War, Minimum Wage, Poverty Line, Quagmire, Surge

Co-opting Death: Bush and Cheney and Ford and Saddam

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:53:46 GMT

With the execution of Saddam during the Hajj, and on the Sabbath, the New Year starts out with the ominous sounds of Death and the Co-opting of Death. ANd then there were the long and ornate funeral services for Ford.

Both Bush and Cheney inserted themselves into the public halo that now surrounds Ford (and while he was an honest man, he was not a saint), almost as if they were part of that halo. Cheney’s comments at one of the commerations were sickening, as is almost every word that drops from his scheming mouth. Bush, no doubt after consulting Manhattan’s best-performing and most expensive PR firms, managed to link himself and all that has touched to the legacy of Ford. Bush is most certinaly trying to take advantage of the Nation's mood, and trying to insert himself into what good Ford did. Designating today as a National Day of Mourning is one example - how great to start out 2007 with a day of mourning. What does that portend for the future?

Bush’s new theme: No matter what a president has done, public opinion about him will soften and upon death he will get his halo.

Message to us: I ain’t so bad; support me. What can you lose? You’ll forgive me in a few years anyway. The Lord says you have to. Forgiveness is in our Christian fabric.

So now Bush & Cheney can claim part of that nimbus and its light as theirs while they start the New Year out touting their great achievement: the hanging of Saddam on a holy day.

The implications of all this will surely be missed by the great majority of American who, still nursing their hangovers and watching the football results, will be more turned into the sordid lives of inexplicably celebrated celebrities and their periodic displays of bodily areas now commonly referred to ask “junk” (how wonderful it is that the female reproductive organs are now referred to as “junk”).

Morally, the last week of December 2006 underscored what the whole year and indeed what the whole Bush administration has always been about: connecting even the most unrelated of events, pushing the most vainglorious of ideas, excusing onself from the most un-Christian of actions. Bush continues to try to convince us that his plans were necessary, wanted and beneficial. He and Cheney have convinced us that we need to lower our moral standards ever closer to Hell, that they will always know better and that in the end the country will benefit.

What we have benefited from is an amoral war, character assassinations, lower standard sof living, prevaricating politicians and their lobbyist camapaign financerss, and of course higher gas prices. While Bush and Cheney cling to Ford’s halo, they must remember that Saddam’s ghost is not far behind.

Tags: 2006, 2007, Bush, Cheney, death of Ford, hajj, hanging of Saddam