WASHINGTON DC -- According to freelance journalist Wayne Madsden, "George W Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to 'evil doers,' in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ."
Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.
Before he became pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."
The pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution.
Madsen contends that "Bush is a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult."
COPYRIGHT 2003 Catholic New Times, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
Lords and Ladies, Ministers, Distinguished guests,
Angelique Chrisafis wrote an article in the Financial Times called "Texan values' are new global menace," May 26, 2003 that deserves a little clarification. Angelique Chrisafis is incorrect in the assumption that George Walker Bush is a Texan. George Walker Bush is in fact an immigrant (perhaps an alien, only we're not sure from which planet) from the state of Maine. He did not grow up learning the values that I learned.
George Walker Bush is in fact a product of New England, schooled at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and later at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. I have yet to find proof at Yale, however at Harvard baccalaureate degrees can be bought for approximately $500,000. All that the buyer has to do is to make an occasional appearance. But getting back to the point, about the only ties that he has to the state of Texas is the time he spent in the Texas Air National Guard where he was affectionately known as "Skidmark," so that he could escape going to Vietnam. And he went AWOL from that duty as the spin-doctors would like to have you believe, but considering the time he was away, he clearly deserted. Now these are not the actions of Texas veterans. And the only other role related to Texas was his stint as governor; and you have to realize that making someone governor of Texas is to put them in a place where we can keep a close eye on them, and where they can do no harm - Texas governors have no actual authority or power. One might say that Texans, having the patience of Job, merely tolerated him. So let us set his story straight.
We Texans are a light hearted lot. We enjoy a good laugh, and having people laugh with us. When George Walker Bush threw in his hat for president, we figured; "what the hay, it could be a better joke than cold fusion." So we promoted him. Little did we know that the rest of the nation wouldn't get the joke. So we were absolutely mortified when the Supreme Court handed the presidency over to him. I mean just take a look at the governor's mansion in Austin. Now, after viewing the governor's mansion in Austin, take a look at any insane asylum in the United Kingdom. Do they not look the same?!?! Geepers, how dense can people be? When Texans want someone to be president, they make them go the traditional route as either Speaker of the House of Representatives or as Vice-President.
And just listen to him. I don't know if you ever saw the movie "Being There," starring Peter Sellers. However there is also a book published in 1971 by the same name that it was based off of written by Jerzy Kosinski, should you wish to read it. It's double-edged satire on politics and television, exposing a self-serving and self-deceived society. Through the innocence of the Chance character (Peter Sellers), all the schemes and manipulations of the world are laid bare.
Does not George Walker Bush remind you so very much of the Chance character, only perhaps with his strings being pulled by Karl Rove, that it is eerie. Might one consider it irony that the story line of the book and movie closes with the powers in Washington D.C. deciding that the only way to hold onto the Presidency is to put the Chance character up for President? I mean, just lend an ear to George Walker Bush and what is it that he says? Allow me to give you a hint, the line by the Louise character in the movie virtually knocks you down;
"Gobbledegook! All the time he talked gobbledegook! An' it's for sure a White man's world in America, hell, I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant an' I'll say right now he never learned to read an' write - no sir! Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now! Yes, sir - all you gotta be is white in America an' you get whatever you want! Just listen to that boy - gobbledegook!"
That said, the question is what to do about it? It is clear that this congress will not impeach! I mean just look at those loonies; a careful review of the Corporate Accountability in Bankruptcy Act points out that the act is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, there is no substance. And this past Friday night, May 23rd, is sure to go down as one of the darkest days in American history. I refer to the process that congress used in raising the debt ceiling. In what I can only describe as being like thieves in the night, republicans in the illustrious 108th Congress put out the word that there would be no more votes for the night. Once they were sure that they had a quorum to vote, and sufficient numbers of congressmen opposed to the vote had left, Congress passed legislation allowing government debt to grow by a record $984 billion. In this case GOP senators were united in an effort to get the measure to the White House -- and out of the political limelight -- quickly. I mean, is it any wonder that The Financial Times described congress as "The lunatics now in charge of the asylum." Tax Lunacy, Financial Times, May 23, 2003.
The people now running America aren't conservatives; they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have. And the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. We are indeed talking about a return to pre-FDR America. The gains made from the great depression, the New Deal, Social Security, and LBJ's (a true Texan) efforts to complete the New Deal with Medicare and Medicaid, just to name a few are under assault by these radicals.
It has been said that FDR saved the United States from socialism. Social unrest has a way of upsetting the existing order of society. And economic collapses seem to be one of the most surefire ways of generating great social unrest. In the US, the great depression gave us the New Deal, but in Germany, hyperinflation following WW I gave the world Hitler. Economic crises are like wars and fires. They are not things that you really want to play with; especially if you don't know what you are doing. They also seem to be toys that the current administration can't keep its hands off of.
There has been much discussion on your side of the pond as to what the war on Iraq was about. Was it about oil, no. Was it about WMD, no. In fact, from what I've seen, your side of the pond is totally clueless as to what this war was really about. So allow me to tell you. The war on Iraq was a distraction for the American people from the actions of congress and of the president to concoct the coming fiscal crises. In other words, it was entirely about domestic policy. And until Americans can vote these buffoons out of office, unfortunately we're stuck with them.
When we started this practical joke on the nation, we had no idea that it would get so terribly out of hand. Therefore, speaking as a REAL Texan, please allow me to most profusely apologize to all for a practical joke gone badly awry.
His philosophy on the women who came to him for family planning advice: "I would talk to them and if they did not bend to my will I would tell them to go elsewhere." He was also unyielding on birth control, once claiming that "when it became possible for women to buy contraceptives of their own, men lost their manhood. Damn that birth control pill!!!"
Archer also has some interesting theories about the non-white population of Texas. He says that to understand why there is such a high percentage of black children being born out of wedlock we need to understand "why it is when blacks were more segregated and had less opportunity" the out-of-wedlock birth rate was lower. He also thinks that part of the problem these days is that blacks simply "don't buy" cultural and legal institutions like marriage. Archer has also blamed Texas' high teen pregnancy rate on the fact that the state's Hispanics lack the belief that "'that getting pregnant is a bad thing."
Bush has also found it difficult to extend his "compassion" to the Texans most in need of it, its poor children. Texas, as I have noted, has the second highest percentage of uninsured children in the country. In 1999, it also had a $2 billion surplus and was looking at a windfall of money from its settlement with tobacco companies. To me, it seems the compassionate thing to do might have been to use a very little bit of that money to help insure some of those children. Luckily, Bush had just that opportunity with the Children's Health Insurance Plan. CHIP, as it's known, provides health insurance for children who are above the poverty line (and thus not eligible for Medicaid) but whose families are too poor to afford coverage. One half of all uninsured children in America fall into this category. CHIP is a state's dream come true. The Federal government puts up most of the dollars but the details of creating and implementing a plan that uses those dollars is left up to the state. Not surprisingly, this program has been a huge hit among Bush's brethren of GOP governors. John Engler of Michigan, Christine Whitman of New Jersey, George Pataki of New York, Pete Wilson of California and even Bush's brother Jeb of Florida all greeted CHIP enthusiastically and set the cut off for CHIP eligibility at 200% or even 300% of the poverty level. The Texas Legislature wanted to match most of these other states and set the level in Texas at 200% (which would be an annual income of $34,100 for a family of four). At that level, 500,000 Texas children would have gotten the coverage they desperately needed. Bush would have none of it. He directed his staff to fight the 200% level and insisted that the level be set at 150% instead. That extra 50% would have meant that a full 200,000 Texas children would have lost out on health insurance thanks to Bush's "compassion." Why did Bush oppose the 200% level? Well, he claimed that such an expenditure was "fiscally irresponsible". He said this despite the fact that the state had a $2 billion surplus and that Bush, himself, was pushing for a huge $2.7 billion tax cut. It's fiscally irresponsible to spend a couple hundred million to insure 200,000 children but it is responsible to blow your entire surplus on a huge tax cut? That tells you a lot about Bush's priorities. What's even more baffling is that expanding CHIP to the 200% level would have cost Texas hardly anything. The feds would have paid for $220 million of the $400 million cost while the remaining $180 million would have been covered by the huge tobacco settlement. It would have cost nothing out of Texas' general revenue fund! Yet this is irresponsible and a $2.7 billion tax cut is not?
A more sinister motive for Bush's opposition has floated around Texas since the whole CHIP fiasco transpired. One side effect of CHIP is that advertising its availability also brings in many who people who aren't eligible for CHIP only because they are below the poverty level and thus eligible for Medicaid. The higher the level for CHIP is set, the more potential there is to bring in people who are eligible for Medicaid. Thus, setting the level at 200% brought the possibility that Texas' Medicaid ranks would have swollen (with people who should have been getting it all along). This, the theory goes, would have looked bad for his presidential campaign and left him open for attacks from the right during the primaries (remember that, according to Maxey, Bush pushed for harsh welfare sanctions because a softer stance would have left him open to the same kind of attacks). This theory gained credence when, after being defeated on the cut-off level for CHIP, Bush fought just as hard to keep the applications for CHIP and Medicaid separate. If your goal is to make sure that everyone eligible gets insured, then a common application in the only sensible approach. But if you're trying to keep people who are eligible for Medicaid off of Medicaid, then separate applications make perfect sense. So, the way Bush wanted to set it up, CHIP applicants who found out they were eligible for Medicaid would have to make an appointment at a Medicaid office and fill out yet another more complicated application. "The real fear was Medicaid spillover," Maxey said. "All the studies show that 66 percent never return" to fill out the second application. "They were terrified of the Medicaid spillover because they want to be able to say welfare rolls are dropping." Thankfully, Bush lost on this too and a common application was created. But Bush had the last laugh, a month after the program began, application forms were still unavailable in the most logical places, branches of the Department of Health and Human Services. It's hard to get spillover, after all, if there are no applications of any kind.
One aspect of Bush's "compassion" that he chooses to highlight with no end is his deep and sincere faith in Christianity. He played this card many times, trumpeting it in Iowa debates (where he named Jesus as his favorite political philosopher) and repeating it in the deep south. While faith is a wonderful thing, I found, at least, Bush's use of Christianity as a political prop to be offensive both to the non-religious and to the religious. After all, wasn't it Jesus himself who said "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them?" It seems this isn't the only tenant of Christianity that Bush got wrong. For someone who is Bush's favorite political philosopher, Jesus certainly doesn't seem to be Bush's political role model. Reverend Madison Shockley took a look at Bush and Jesus for the LA Times. Jesus was rightly wary of his followers trying to use their faith as an accessory. Such a use demeans a faith. Christianity, or any faith for that matter, is supposed to be something that you hold close to you heart and sacred. How can it be sacred if you are using it to try to impress people? You practice Christianity because it is what you believe, not because it is what you want people to believe about you. I'm not suggesting that Bush is not a devout Christian; by all accounts he is very true in his faith. There is no question, however, that he used his faith for political gain in Iowa and elsewhere and that is exactly the kind of behavior that Jesus warns against in Matthew's Gospel. Jesus also preaches true compassion in Matthew's Gospel, "For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me." Shockley argues that this suggests Jesus would have supported lax immigration laws, and more "compassionate" welfare and health care laws. He certainly would not have supported vetoing a hunger fighting measure and then making excuses when the news comes out that your state is bringing up the rear in the fight against hunger. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount teaches "you have heard that it was said 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' but I say to you 'Do not resist an evil doer.' But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Shockley doesn't find this to be a ringing endorsement of executing 150 people. In fact, Shockley finds Bush to be severely lacking when it comes to emulating Jesus, "I discovered that Bush had not taken the 'political' teachings of Jesus seriously. Indeed, he betrayed no knowledge of their content." Perhaps Bush should reread this portion of the Bible: "not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father."
For five years, Bush was the governor of Texas. For some reason, you never heard Bush describe himself as a "compassionate conservative" when governor was his only role. That's a good thing, because that would have been a total misnomer. Bush has managed to figure out where compassion lies and run just about as far away as possible in his five years as governor. Be it crushing hate crimes legislation which could have made a real start at attacking some of the serious bigotry that still exists in Texas; be it appointing people to powerful positions who have displayed behavior that, at best, is terribly backwards and, at worst, is simply sexist and racist; or be it fighting tooth and nail to keep 200,000 poor kids from receiving health insurance, Bush has been passionately uncompassionate. The most ironic thing, I think, is that when Bush adopted the mantle of "compassionate conservatism" he followed this quite quickly by launching himself just about as far to the right as one can go.
Bush has always demonstrated a willingness to cozy up to the extreme elements of his party, but he has never been more enthusiastic about doing so than he was when he had a primary or three riding on it. Meanwhile, he has continued with his pattern of avoiding stances on important, but controversial (at least controversial to bigoted people), issues.
If you want extreme, the place you need to go is the Texas Republican Party convention. Here are some stances the Texas GOP has taken in their convention platform:
Abolish the federal income tax and the IRS - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is on board with this saying that replacing the income tax, payroll and other related federal taxes would provide more money for people to use and he endorsed a proposal from Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., for a national 23 percent across-the-board sales tax.
"It is simple. DeLay wants to eliminate all progressive taxes and replace them with extremely regressive ones. If you make more than you can spend, it will simply pile up unfettered, and with the disgraceful elimination of the estate tax, what you get is 'a new class of landed aristocrats,'" as Newsweek's Wall Street Editor put it. "Those trying to work their way up, on the other hand, will be taxed on every cent they make because they have to spend every cent they make ..."
Repeal all minimum wage laws
Eliminate Social Security entirely
Withdrawal the US from the UN, NATO, NAFTA and the WTO (I could even get on board with ditching NAFTA and the WTO) Having grown up in Texas, I saw with my own eyes how companies in Texas were abusing existing laws on illegal immigration to put Americans out of work. Adolph Hitler's propaganda minister stated the secret to effective propaganda was to keep the message simple and tell it often. The pithy statements from business stated almost nightly that "Mexicans were only taking jobs Americans did not want." All too often, I saw houses built throughout the Houston metropolitan area by illegal immigrants. Since when have Americans not wanted carpenter, plumber, or electrician jobs? However when business was called onto the carpet for these indiscretions, business would respond by saying they hired no illegal aliens, in other words to use plausible deniability to discredit the allegation while the issue was swept under the proverbial rug. And mind you, this was occurring a decade before NAFTA.
Return to the Gold Standard [the Gold Standard? Who the hells thinks that's a good idea in this day and age???] Make Capital Punishment even more swift and unencumbered [we're talking faster and easier than it already is in Texas here]
Bush has also found time to get close to some of the biggest extremists in the national party as well. In October, Bush spoke to the Council for National Policy. The council calls itself a non-partisan educational organization, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The group was founded my Reverend Tim LaHayne, an extreme right wing graduate of Bob Jones University. LaHayne has been actively involved with extreme Religious Right groups for decades - he co-founded the Moral Majority and also headed the American Coalition for Traditional Values.
Skipp Porteous who, as director of the Institute for First Amendment Studies, monitors hate groups regards the council as an umbrella group that plots strategy for the entire GOP far right. In fact, the council consists of ardent anti-abortion groups, pro-gun nuts and hard core religious fundamentalists. Its membership rolls include such luminaries as Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Jesse Helms, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, Oliver North, James Dobson and Bob Jones III. The meeting at which Bush spoke was rather large and included many other speakers. Audio tapes of all the speakers were made available for purchase through a company called Skynet Media. All of the speakers except one, that is: George W. Bush. The Bush campaign says this is because there is no tape of Bush's speech, "as far as we know," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "there is no tape." That's not what Skynet says, though. Curt Morse of Skynet says that they do have copies of Bush's speech, but the Bush campaign refuses to release it for general consumption. Asked if the tape were available for any price, Morse could only reply, "I wish!" The Bush camp also claims that Bush merely gave his standard stump speech. Why then, are they suppressing the tape? If it's only his standard stump speech there's no reasons for them to worry about its contents and certainly no reasons for them to lie about its existence.
What won't Bush do? Well, we know some of the things he will do. We saw them up close and personal in South Carolina. He will pander to one of the religious right's most lunatic and bigoted leaders. He will embrace the conservative values he shares with a university that bans interracial dating and espouses violently anti-Catholic beliefs. What he won't do, it seems, is take a stance against bigotry and prejudice if it might cost him South Carolina's white supremacist vote.
The affinity Bush, and the rest of the Republican Party, have shown over the past few years for men and groups with an extremist right wing bent has already started to drive away some of the party's rising minority stars. Faye Anderson, one of the few black women activists in the Republican Party, was seen by the GOP as a rising star in the late '90s. In 1997, the GOP established the New Majority Council with the explicit goal of incorporating more minorities into the party. Anderson was tapped to head the Council and the Republican effort to woo blacks and other minorities. In March, the consistent GOP pandering to extremists finally overwhelmed her and Anderson left not only the New Majority Council but the Republican Party altogether. Citing Bush's visit to Bob Jones' University and his unwillingness to take a stance against the Confederate flag in South Carolina, along with the continued ties of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group; Anderson explained, "my switch [from the GOP to independent] comes in the wake of a pattern of racial blunders that I cannot dismiss as mere 'mistakes.'" She continued, "The Republican Party should do some serious spring cleaning because the stench up under the 'big tent' with the likes of the CCC, [former Klu Klux Klan leader] David Duke, Confederate flag wavers and Bob Jones has become intolerable."
More so than looking at the GOP's delegates, simply examining Bush's record completely debunks the myth that Bush is some "different kind of Republican." He is just the same old kind of Republican wrapped in a shiny new package. His record in Texas is anything but compassionate. His appointment as Texas' health commissioner has demonstrated a backwards attitude towards blacks, Hispanics and women and many of his other appointees are just as bad. He has avoided any kind of accommodation of Texas's gay community and he was the only one out of all fifty governors to ignore a plea to help African children with AIDS. He has executed hundreds of people, some of whom never had a chance in the Texas legal system and some of whom were almost certainly innocent - he even took pleasure in mocking the last moments of one of the two women he has executed. He fought tooth and nail to keep 200,000 poor children from getting health insurance apparently for no better reason that to help his own political cause. He has embraced Pat Buchanan (who has praised Adolf Hitler), Pat Robertson (who once warned the city of Orlando that they faced having a meteor strike their city as punishment for hosting a gay pride event) and Bob Jones (who thinks the Pope is the antichrist). Heck, Bush has even embraced two men who have directly linked his father to Lucifer! He has run like hell from any position that might have alienated his base of bigots and racists in the South Carolina and other states. He has even addressed a group that represents all of the GOP's most militant and extremist factions rolled into one (and he has done his damned to make sure no one ever knows what he said). Bush is not a different kind of Republican. As Faye Anderson understood, he fits nicely in the party of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott.
"It's one thing to lurch to the right. It's another thing to lurch back 60 years." -- Conservative Commentator William Kristol on Bush's visit to Bob Jones University
When I started laying out the design for my web site, my intention was to keep it purely business; my business accomplishments and successes, perhaps a résumé, and some references. But then I thought; "Why? No matter how hard I market myself, George Bush and his wrecking crew are working just as hard, and with much greater resources than I have, to move all my work offshore." Therefore logic would dictate that in order for me to market myself successfully, first I had to deal with the albatross holding me, and much of America's businesses back, our un-elected president. While I will provide a link to reach me (see, I told you I would), and provide some information on the work that I do, as well as all my successes; first and foremost, I am dedicating this web site to educate the public on why Bush doesn't belong in the White House and who the true flip flopper really is.
Let's first cut to the basics. Bush is wrong on the economy. In 1929, Herbert Hoover was thrown out of office on his ears when America suffered a net loss of jobs while he was in office. Bush has also suffered a net loss of jobs on his watch. Now I already know the spin that Republicans throw on this issue; but the point is that Bush is president of the United States, not the world. So his first responsibility is to protect our jobs, and not to facilitate more offshoring! When Bush facilitates more offshoring, he ceased representing our interests.
Just one of the issues that I, and I believe that we all should, have with Emperor George has been his repeated abuse of our nation's intelligence resources. When that abuse results in the deaths of 2,973 of our fellow citizens after being warned by a European diplomatic mission, and to persist for the sole purpose of industrial espionage to benefit his base, and then to follow this up by turning these intelligence resources against America by censoring private e-mail, then it's time to borrow a sentiment from Oliver Cromwell, when he dissolved the English Parliament in 1653 saying, "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
However, it isn't just Bush. Since the hijacking of the Republican Party by neoconservatives, the Republican Party has behaved more like racketeers ala a criminal syndicate subject to prosecution under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations or RICO Act, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961-1968 than a legitimate political party. And were John Ashcroft not merely a sycophantic quisling and apparatchik abetting the current status quo, then he'd be prosecuting individuals within the Republican Party for the following real crimes;
Criminal conspiracy
Contempt of Congress
Contempt of Court
Destroying evidence
Embezzlement
Fraud and the intent to defraud
Gross malfeasance
Industrial espionage
Insider trading
Lying under oath
Money laundering
Obstructing justice
But instead, he's harrassing 52-year-old special education teachers for carrying [gasp] a bookmark!
Teacher Arrested After Bookmark Called Concealed Weapon TAMPA, Fla. 10:17 am EDT September 17, 2004 -- A weight may soon be lifted off a Maryland woman charged with carrying a concealed weapon in an airport. It wasn't a gun or a knife. It was a weighted bookmark. Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation last month when screeners at the Tampa, Fla., airport found her bookmark. It's an 8.5-inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end. Airport police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old special education teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. She faced a possible criminal trial and a $10,000 fine. But the state declined to prosecute, and the Transportation Security Administration said it probably won't impose a fine. Harrington said she'll never again carry her bookmark into an airport.
But like the old saying goes; we hang the petty criminals; but as for the great criminals, we elect them to high offices. In Austin, Texas, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Texas Speaker Tom Craddick distanced themselves from the Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) after a state grand jury indicted three of the PAC's consultants. But the Houston Chronicle revealed that DeLay and Craddick were kept abreast of the PAC's operations and were personally involved in the fund-raising activities. The issue is one that smells suspiciously like money laundering between TRMPAC and Republican House candidates during the 2002 elections. In this case, eight companies;
Boston, Massachusetts based The Alliance for Quality Home Care (trying to affect Medicare legislation),
San Leandro, California based Diversified Collection Services, Inc. (collects debts for the U.S. Treasury Department),
Charlottesville, Virginia based Questerra Corp. (seeking government contracts for homeland security),
Lebanon, Tennessee based Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. (industry leader in political activities),
Topeka, Kansas based Westar Energy Inc. (wrote legislation benefiting Westar),
Miami, Florida based Bacardi U.S.A. Inc. (seeking company rights to the Havana Club rum label used by CubaExport, a subsidiary of the Cuban government in partnership with Pernod Ricard of France),
Chicago, Illinois based Sears Roebuck,
Tulsa, Oklahoma based Williams Cos. (currently inolved in the California energy fraud scandal) ...
... have so far been indicted for laundering funds into TRMPAC. This is not how business is transacted within of a constitutional republic! These actions are inconsistent with the laws of constitutional republics. A republic is a land ruled by laws; and the Republicans have placed themselves above the law. Therefore, in addition to carrying out a Supreme Court assisted coup-de-tat, Republicans are trying to foist onto this nation oligarchy. Oligarchy is defined as a government by a few, and usually for corrupt purposes.
Bush is wrong on religion. To play off the superstitions of the people, the Republicans have enlisted the efforts of the religious right. The so-called religious right is, to borrow from an oft heard criticism of the Catholic Church in that it has "more money than God;" has "more influence than God," and is actively working to reshape America into a theocracy. First off, I have to seriously question the religious right's understanding of the Christian faith. Christ WAS NOT a Republican! And I can easily imagine Christ lumping the religious right in with all the false prophets and Pharisees. I would have to argue that the religious right has adopted Roman Emperor Constantine's view of religion.
Constantine used the church as an instrument of imperial policy, imposed upon it his imperial ideology, and thus deprived it of much of the independence which it had previously enjoyed. The scriptures, themselves, speak of Constantine's imperial ideology should one consider the timing of various scriptures to the events taking place in Rome. For instance, the following scriptures were written at a time of Christian persecution ...
Acts 7:35 This Moses whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? was the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. Acts 23:5 Then Paul said, I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people. Romans 13:3 For rulers are not a terror for those who do good works, but to those who do evil. Do you want to have no fear of the one in authority? do that which is good, and you shall have his praise: Romans 13:4 For he is a minister of God for your good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God to execute wrath upon the one who does evil. Romans 13:5 Therefore you must be subject, not only to avoid wrath, but also for conscience sake. Romans 13:6 For this reason you also pay taxes: for they are God's ministers, attending continually to this very service. Titus 3:1 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do every good work,
What these speak to when taken in chronological context is the unquestioned authority of a ruler ... and theologically, or idealistically in a messianic movement, that if one wants to save their soul, then obey your rulers or betters. What these do not speak to is Christ's egalitarian message. But what can we expect from the hypocrites of the religious right? The religious right has long been a bunch of flim-flam artists;
17th Through 19th Century White Man's Flim-Flam To Take Land; 21st Century White Man's Flim-Flam To Take Casinos
Even lobbyists are growing more brazen under Bush as they 'flim-flam' clients; Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon 'flim-flammed' the Tigua Indians in Texas out of a $60 million dollar-a-year casino and $4.2 million in lobbying fees paid to Michael Scanlon's lobbying firm as part of a lobbying plan called "Operation Open Doors." Part of the operation was to make approximately $300,000 in federal political contributions. The Tigua Indians contracted with Abramoff and Scanlon after the State of Texas closed down the casino. What the Tigua didn't know, and that was reported by the Washington Post, was that before Abramoff and Scanlon 'represented' the Tigua, Abramoff and Scanlon were actively working on behalf of rival tribes to shut down the Tigua casino. Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition head, was also retained by the coalition to shut down the Tigua casino with a retainer of more than $4 million to oppose several Indian casinos. Abramoff wrote Ralph Reed in a November 2001 e-mail "We should continue to pile on until the place is shuttered." And three months later, as Abramoff wrote Reed about "those moronic Tigua," Abramoff was telling a Tigua representative that he could fix the "gross indignity perpetuated by the Texas State authorities" and that he had already lined up "a couple of senators willing to ram this through."
This exploitation of the Tigua to make money by sticking it to the Tigua, and then making even more by promising to undo that damage raises avarice and duplicity to all time new levels. A further report by the Washington Post identified who benefited from all this flim-flamming; an Abramoff-funded 'charity,' the Capitol Athletic Foundation received $2 million from three of Abramoff's tribal clients. Just one of 'charity's' activities was a $150,225 golfing trip to Scotland by private jet lavished upon House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (Republican - Ohio), and Reed.
Ralph, you hypocrite; just where did Christ teach us that flim-flamming was permissible? You can read more about Bush's, and the religious right's theocracy in Bush Theocracy.
Bush is wrong on defense. Iraq formerly posed no threat to us. Trumping up a call for war based upon fallacious information in order to exploit a new empire conquest, neocons find themselves now unable to exploit those resources because they lacked the understanding of that one benefit that Saddam Hussein provided.
He kept the internecine warfare between the disparate groups in Iraq in check after colonialization had cobbled together states based upon European politics rather than the reality of the peoples living within the region. Before Bush came to power, only 10 percent of the Muslim world was against us. Now, 75 percent of the Muslim world is against us. So are we safer? Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm not a big fan of Ted Kennedy. But even Kennedy recognizes Bush is "the world record-holder for flip-flops," and his handling of Iraq has been "a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance and stubborn ideology" stating at George Washington University; "No matter how many rhetorical double-twisting back flips President Bush performs, his disingenuous claim that the war has made America safer is wrong, and may well be catastrophically wrong." By acting as a quisling for al Qaeda by providing an example that al Qaeda could use to unify arabs to raise a new army of Saledin against the west, Bush has messed up even empire conquest.
Bush is wrong on national unity. Meanwhile, this regime seems to have taken a page from Hermann Goering, the head of Nazi propaganda, who said, "All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." And all this is in order to silence those of us who are desperately trying to retain some semblance of our constitutional republic! Since the Bush regime, America has never been more divided or polarized. Where once hatreds were kept under wraps and largely in check, today that hate has grown palpable. In communities, large and small, across the country, Republicans are behaving (or misbehaving) much more like the Nazis of the German Weimar Republic. The Galveston County Democratic Party office in League City was attacked when someone took a car jack to the front windows of the office. The Texas Republican leader said that he hoped the attacker was not a Republican. Well, duh; the attacker pasted a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on the front door! Political signs on private lawns advocating Kerry/Edwards have been pulled out en masse, and it's not just those small cardboard ones; shades of kristallnacht! Kristallnacht was one of those defining moments toward the end of the German Weimar Republic when the Nazis went on rampage.
Across America, the Bush regime and the Department of Homeland Security are whipping up a frenzy of fear to make people irrational, and reinforcing that fear is the loss of jobs and diminishing living standards, and increasing secrecy that is creating even more anxiety. This is not the America that I know and love! Thirty years ago, I served in uniform honorably, and I would have laid down my life for my country. But, and this is what hurts most of all, not today. Between the sycophants of the religious right advocating that I should leave America because I'm un-American simply because I'm trying to maintain some faint resemblance of a republic in this country, to a government that has totally lost its understanding of who it works for, to companies that 'reap where they do not sow' AND believe that the law only applies to the little guy; I no longer recognize my own country ... since America has strayed so far afield of her principles under the domination of the Republicans, America has become totally alien to me!
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Former President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt said; "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public ... Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him[sic: the president or any public official] to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he[sic: the president or any public official]fails in his duty to stand by the country ... No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker." I WILL stand by "my" government only to the degree that "my" government stands by my country. I did not sign on for this to live in an oligarchy. Oligarchies do not serve my egalitarian beliefs. Oligarchy is diametrically opposed to the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy; and theocracy is diametrically opposed to Hamiltonian Democracy. And it is for this reason that I wrote, and continue to update my manuscript, With Malice and Forethought, and that the Bush administration strives so hard to censor it by deleting the e-mails that I send it to others in.
Since Bush formerly owned the Texas Rangers, and had the citizens of Texas buy the Rangers a new stadium, then it would be logical to suggest that Bush is a baseball fan. In baseball, after three strikes, you're out! I just went through Bush's three strikes without thinking too hard. But just like in the movie Poltergeist, well, he's back! When I was growing up, I had the benefit of learning about 'the powers' from Dr. and Reverend Walter Wink as he began his ministry in my church, the First United Methodist Church. Rather than to go into depth defining 'the powers,' it is more important at this juncture to know how to make use of 'the powers.'
Republicans, you may have noticed, lack a 'sense of humor' about themselves. And it is this that will serve to be their Achilles heal. Their downfall will come by our removal of the credibility they inherited after neoconservatives hijacked the Republican Party. We should be using three powers against Bush and his neoconservative sycophants, humor, credibility, and leadership. Let's start with the last first; Bush is reactionary. Reactionaries are not leaders; leaders act, they don't react. So our efforts should be to seize the initiative. Seizing that initiative, what then should be our goal? In short, to discredit this administration. But isn't that what people are currently doing? Yes, and no. By getting the word out there, we are. But more can be done. We should be focusing upon inciting Bush's sycophants to react to obviously non-threatening mediums, such as lampoons, in a very public place, where the sycophants' overreactions will be visible to all who would see, and where it will receive the most air-play.
bravenet.com
When I started laying out the design for my web site, my intention was to keep it purely business; my business accomplishments and successes, perhaps a résumé, and some references. But then I thought; "Why? No matter how hard I market myself, George Bush and his wrecking crew are working just as hard, and with much greater resources than I have, to move all my work offshore." Therefore logic would dictate that in order for me to market myself successfully, first I had to deal with the albatross holding me, and much of America's businesses back, our