"Emmanuel Goldstein"

Here he comes... the Ministry of Truth is finally getting its terrorist-actor thing right...

google "al qaeda" (News)

they are ALL al qaeda
... and we are ALL bozos on this bus...

Big Dick Cheney in Weimar

I cant think of a better example of the triumph of 'truthless' postmodernism a la Lynn Cheney's nemesis (in what are her several apologetic theologies for superman-amerika -- "truth, justice and the amerikan way..." yee-haw) than her creepy evil husband's neat trick of making his office of the vice-presidency a fourth branch of the federal government.

This little coup has been spieling along for sometime now in little asides to the press -- Cheney people feigning a head-slapping Goober Pyle incredulity that the Veep is the President's right hand AND the Prez of the Senate. [Josh Marshall started remarking on it months ago.]

PoMo Civics, mofo: If he's Pres of the Senate, he's Legislative; if he's second to the President, he's Executive. So he's like: Nobody tells me what to do... You aren't the boss of me...

Golly and holy mackeral, how has anybody been able to cope with such an incongruent, and de-stable collection of descriptors of the Office of Duh Veep for, say, the last two hundred and thirty years? It makes you yearn for the days of a "pitcher of warm spit."

So Dick Cheney is my new Nietzschean hero... he knows will-to-power as the ultimate paradigm of western civilization at this historical juncture when he smells it. And he knows how to grab it, just like he knows how to shoot old men in the face with birdshot.

A'course, the Democrats are the real losers in this titanic battle beyond good and evil. They have adapted well the slave morality, the silly whimpering Christian resentiment against the snarling mad dog Republican coup d'état. The Demos have always been for "the common good" and for protecting the small from the big. But now, the small is tiny and the big is gigantic, and there aint no protecting anymore. It is impossible. The gigantic is just gonna eat up all the little tinies. You and me, Ace, and our kids, we're fucked.

The paradigm has shifted, sweet caring Demos (or older cliche: you cant put the genie or the toothpaste back in the lamp/tube). Democracy in America is moving from D'tocqueville to Gringrich, or has been. I often think these days that Amerika is only now wrestling with fascism the way Europe did a half century ago. The US only responded militarily to fascism in Europe.

Now "it can't happen here" is starting to happen in a uniquely American way, as the uniquely American institutions -- corporations, churches, public education, media -- all transform themselves into what they need to be as American fascism saturates the various cultural textures of our society. Mainly, these institutions just get stupid and crude and violent. It is the everydayness of the de-humanization that is fascism. And the police will come along soon enough.

(Certainly the shift, the amazing shift that has taken place in the last generation or so, the message to our youth: "We don't need you. We don't necessarily have room for you. You aren't necessarily welcome here. No guarantees." I didn't get that growing up in the 50s. I got the message that I was wanted and needed by society. But then, I'm an old white guy. And now, oh, sweet karma, even young white guys are no longer getting the message that Blacks and women probably didnt get in the 50s. Nobody is getting it. Corporate culture means all humans are interchangeable parts, except, of course, the big Daddies at the top... Care is so passé... )

So what we got kids: We got Weimar. Right now, maybe through the 2008 election -- until the big bad booger terrorists hit us in a way for which there is no appropriate response outside of "an extra-Constitutional emergency." Read about Weimar, compare what we know happened in Germany between the wars and what is happening here and now -- culturally, politically, mythically. And yes, it will be on the test...

Ha ha ha, what chumps we are...

Corporate Thieves of the World Rejoice!!!!

Today the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck another blow to the individual investor. According to the NY Times: ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/washington/21cnd-bizcourt.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin )

The Supreme Court dealt a new blow today to investors suing companies over accusations of fraud when it set a higher standard to prevent the lawsuits from being dismissed.

The decision was the second this week by the court that was a defeat for shareholders and a victory for the defendant companies. On Monday, the justices ruled that securities underwriters on Wall Street are generally immune from civil antitrust lawsuits.

That's right, SCOTUS has once again signaled that a corporate "person hood" is more important than an individual person. So if you are a shiftless executive who has cooked the books to convince investors to continue to invest in your failing company, you can rest easy tonight, knowing that SCOTUS is on your side. If your a poor SOB who has had his life savings stolen by such a company, your just going to have to tough it out, quit your whining and plan to retire sometime around age 85. Or to paraphrase a friend of mine " I am making progress, now I am only going to have to work one month past the day I die."

Just remember, rob a convenience store and you go to jail. Rob thousands of people of hundreds of millions of dollars and you can retire as a successful captain of industry and our Government will protect you from prosecution.

Heck of a job, Al

It is reassuring to know that Bush has even more confidence that Alberto Gonzales is doing his job, after seeing Gonzales' testimony in front of the senate last week.

Leaving aside the fact that Bush's press secretary admitted, right after saying Bush was satisfied Gonzales' testimony, that Bush had not actually seen Al's testimony. That was last week, maybe Bush has watched the hearing since that press conference.

The real question I have is just what job did Bush hire Al to do. Maybe he was hired to lie to the American people and Congress and generally shed no light on anything the Justice Department has been involved in since he was named Attorney General. If that is his job description, I can see why Bush is so pleased with Al's performance.

health care for the poor

Below is a statement which I lifted from Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. It is a public statement by a group of poor rural Haitians published in 2001. I think that it raises many good points which we should all ponder. Most poignantly, it asks "is every human being not a person?", and states "The right to health is a right to life. Everyone has a right to live."

Something is very wrong with our public health systems. Miracles for those with limitless resources. Very little, or nothing, for the poor. This statement makes the case that public health and access to medical care our human rights. Perhaps if we could view access to health care as inalienable as freedom of speech we might structure our national health care system in a more equatable manner, and also work to make the global health care system more equatable.

It is we who are sick; it is therefore we who take responsibility to declare our suffering, our misery, and our pain as well as our hope. We hear many poignant statements about our circumstances, but feel compelled to say something clearer and more resounding than what we have heard from others.

[We] are fortunate to have access to medications and health care even though we do not have money to buy them. Many of our health problems have been resolved with [antiretroviral] medications. Given how dire our situation was prior to treatment, we have benefited greatly. But while we feel fortunate to have access to these services, we feel great sadness for others who don't receive the same treatment as we do.

And in addition to our health problems, we have other tribulations. Although less preoccupied with our illnesses, we still have problems paying for housing. We have trouble finding employment. We remain concerned about sending our children to school. Each day we face the distressing reality that we cannot find the means to support them. Not being able to feed our children is the greatest challenge faced by mothers and fathers across the country of Haiti. We have learned that such calamities occur also in other countries. As we reflect on all these tragedies we must ask: is every human being not a person?

Yes, all human beings are people. It is we, the afflicted, who speak now. We have come together... to discuss the great difficulties facing the sick. We've also brought some ideas of our own in our knapsacks; we would like them with you, the authorities, in the hope that you might do something to help resolve the health problems of the poor.

When we the sick, living with AIDS, speak to the subject of "health and human rights," we are aware of two rights that ought to be indivisible and inalienable. Those who are sick should have the right to health care. We who are already infected believe in prevention too. But prevention will not save those who are already ill. All people need treatment when we are sick, but for the poor there are no clinics, no doctors, no nurses, no health care.

Furthermore, the medications now available are too expensive. For HIV treatment, for example, we read in the newspapers that treatment cost less than $600 per year [in developing countries]. Although that is what is quoted in press releases, here in a poor, small country like Haiti, it costs more than twice that much.

The right to health is the right to life. Everyone has a right to live. If we were not living in misery, but rather in decent poverty, many of us would not be in this predicament today....

We have a message for the people who are here and for all those able to hear our plea. We are asking for your solidarity. The battle we're fighting - to find adequate care for those with AIDS, tuberculosis, and other illnesses - is the same as the combat that's long been waged by other oppressed people so that everyone can live as human beings.

More on the US Attorneys scandal

Just as a follow up to the last post I wanted to give some examples of the fine work being done by Josh Marshall over at www.talkingpointmemo.com .

On why these firings matter Josh writes:

So, all of this is to say that no system is perfect and
partisan affiliation may distort the justice system at the margins.

But none of what we're seeing here is at the margins. What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons of the opposite party. Or vice versa. There's little doubt that that is why McKay and Iglesias were fired and there's mounting evidence that this was the case in other firings as well. The idea that a senator calls a US Attorney at home just weeks before a federal elections and tries to jawbone him into
indicting someone to help a friend get reelected is shocking. Think about it for
a second. It's genuinely shocking. At a minimum one would imagine such bad acts
take place with more indirection and deniability. And yet the Domenici-Iglesias
call has now been relegated to the status of a footnote in the expanding
scandal, notwithstanding the fact that there's now documentary evidence showing
that Domenici's substantial calls to the White House and Justice Department
played a direct role in getting Iglesias fired.

On the presidents continued support for Alberto Gonzales even though it has been documented that Mr. Gonzales has repeated lied about his involvement in the firing of these US attorneys, Josh writes:

And the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the
Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been
exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US
Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to
help Republican candidates.

Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows.

And today he reports that most of Karl Roves emails have been sent using RNC accounts:

According to the National Journal, about 95% of Karl Rove's email traffic has been on these RNC email accounts.

Now, I don't know all the legal and constitutional ins and outs of this debate. But whatever claim the White House may have to protect everyone at the White House from congressional scrutiny by invoking executive privilege, this use of outside private email accounts may turn out to be too clever by half.

Can executive privilege even conceiveably cover emails from the Republican National Committee? By any definition, those aren't emails written or received by anyone in their capacity as a presidential advisor. They're private and have nothing to do with the president in his executive capacity.

It's good stuff, check it out.

US Attorney scandal rolls on

The scandal surrounding the firing of eight US attorneys shortly after last years election just keeps getting more interesting. If you have not been following these events, Josh Marshall and his staff at www.talkingpointsmemo.com our doing an excellent job documenting these firings. I highly recommend checking out his site.

What I find interesting is that this appears to leading to a showdown between the Congress and the Bush Administration's theory of the Unitary Executive. Bush, mainly thru consultations with Cheney who has long supported this view, believes that the Executive branch is supreme and the other two branches of our government cannot constitutionally challenge the Executive, particularly in a time of war. To me, this is a patently unamerican interpretation of our Constitution. The Unitary Executive directly contradicts the concept of three equal branches of government which we have been taught since grade school.

It was only a matter of time, before the new Democratically controlled Congress challenged this concept. With so many hearings being conducted simultaneously, who knew which hearing the Bush Administration would refuse to cooperate with. But, given their history, their eventual defiance of Congressional oversight was as sure as the setting of the sun. Bush tossed the gauntlet last week when he went on national TV and announced that he would not allow members of his staff to testify under oath to Congressional judicial oversight committees. Both the senate and house judicial committees responded by voting to subpoena Harriet Miers, and Karl Rove and demand their public testimony under oath. So this is it. Is the Bush Administration above the law, or will members of the Administration have to appear in these hearings? Stay tuned, things are just beginning to heat up.