I got an e-mail chain letter today asking me to "please join us in this FLY THE FLAG campaign and to PLEASE forward this immediately to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward it..."
It is, of course, a thinly disguised bit of propaganda to support Bush and his ugly war.
I have a better idea for a different chain letter e-mail. It goes like this:
Please join us in this IMPEACH BUSH campaign and please forward this email immediately to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward it. We have very little time to stop this dangerous lunatic before he starts a new war in Iran that will make the Iraq disaster look like a day in the park.
If I was inclined to send a chain letter, that is the one I would send.
.
A military court has acquitted Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the only Army officer even put on trial for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
But it did find him guilty of disobeying an order not to discuss the investigation.
In other words, the Army doesn't care about the torture, but he damn well should have kept his mouth shut about it.
That's what passes for justice in the military — and in Bush America.
.
"Greatness is, to be fair, the rarest of human conditions," Stephen Pizzo says in an article at smirkingchimp.com, and proceeds to list some of his American greats. He names America's founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, et al, while conceding they had their flaws. Fair enough.
Then he lists Abe Lincoln and FDR. More troublesome. Lincoln is in large part responsible for the civil war which killed hundreds of thousands. His motives were honorable, assuming that you believe a huge central government is the way to run things. I'm not sure.
Similarly, FDR did some good things for the country, Social Security comes to mind. He also maneuvered us into World War II, 'the good war', which killed somewhere around 100 million people. A great man? Not by my measure.
Then he lists Jack Kennedy, who he says "was shaping up nicely ," and says "we can all thank him for the fact that Florida and Cuba don't glow in the dark today." He's got that exactly backwards. Kennedy nearly got us into a nuclear World War III and the end of civilization. A great man? Nonsense.
He does say that Martin Luther King "shared the kind of greatness our founders had; courage, wisdom and vision." I'll give him that one.
All that to preface his view that none of the people running for president show any signs of greatness. Perhaps not, although Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul would have a shot at it if they could be elected.
Though there I'm playing his game. Is the only way you can be great if you assume great power? The exact opposite is more often true. Great power corrupts... etc.
Who would make your list of great men and women?
For the first time in my life, I'm going to make a contribution to a Republican. Of course, the Republican leadership does not really want to call Ron Paul a Republican. He is antiwar, for one thing. How can you be a Republican and be against the Iraq war or any war we want to wage? Treasonable!
Oh, sure. He's a libertarian and I'm not. He has a lot of ideas that I find dubious, at best. But right now, reining in in the War Party --- which includes both parties --- is the only thing that can save our democracy.
"Unconstitutional government has created a war crisis, a financial crisis, a dollar crisis, and a freedom crisis," he says. "But we don't have to take it. We don't have to passively accept more dead soldiers, a lower standard of living, rising prices, a national ID, eavesdropping on our emails and phone calls, and all the rest."
Amen.
My contribution will be modest and wasted, even though Ron Paul is winning straw poll after stroll poll while the corporate media studiously looks away. But one does what one can.
.
In the past few days I have heard from several supposedly progressive groups --- People for the American Way, ActForChange, TrueMajorityACTION, Moveon.org, ACLU Online --- asking me to:
"Sign the Petition: Tell the House and Senate 'Leaders' to Lead", "Tell Congress: End Aerial Gunning of Wolves" ... "join us in urging Congress to hold White House officials in contempt for ignoring subpoenas," ... "Tell Congress to take back their permission for warrantless spying on Americans," etc.
In other words, exercises in futility and stupidity.
There is only one thing that could change the course of the United States and they're all too timid, or too stupid, or both to consider advocating:
Impeachment.
Without impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, all their crimes will be accepted as a new reality of presidential power. Or to put it more plainly, fascism.
.
War forever
"American politicians have never met a war they didn't like," idiot mcdoofus, says in response to a previous post of mine in which I reported that Barack Obama often seems to be channeling John F. Kennedy, one of the prime promoters of American imperialism.
"America was founded on war, exists on war, and will continue on war," mcdoofus says. "It's the American way of life."
So very true. The coming attack on Iran is inevitable.
.
Barack Obama often seems to be channeling John F. Kennedy these days, and that thrills some liberals. JFK was a benchmark of American liberalism and all liberals must bow to him.
That is, of course, if you are willing to acknowledge that American liberalism is also American imperialism.
By and large, liberals have never met a war they didn't like, and Kennedy gave them a wonderful war. JFK's war was Vietnam. Eisenhower may have started it by sending in the first advisers, and LBJ may have escalated it beyond belief, but Kennedy really set the ball rolling for a war that killed two million Vietnamese and more than 55,000 Americans.
JFK also nearly gave us World War III, a war that would have killed hundreds of millions, when he confronted the Soviet Union over some meaningless missiles in Cuba. Thank God, the Soviet leader had guts enough to back down and avert a nuclear war. Kennedy was a madman.
So now we have the two "leading" Democratic presidential contenders both aching for new wars; Hillary with Iran, and Obama, the JFK lookalike, with Pakistan.
"When I am President," Obama said in a recent speech, "we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Another madman.