Author: phronesis

Steven D. wrote a magnificent diary about boycotting advertisers who advertise on Leno because of his promotion of Ann Coulter and her fascist venom on The Tonight Show.  His diary evoked many comments, a few of which I have copied here because they illuminate what I think is a fatal flaw possessed by some on the left.  This may be a good place to get a debate, or even an argument, about tactics.

Brian Nowhere made a comment to Steven’s diary to which I added my comments.  Here is the string.

First, Brian Nowhere.

I’m sorry, but I have to stand in opposition to this.
I believe in market regulation, but not when it comes to the marketplace of ideas.
How would we feel if the republicans led a boycott of advertisers on a show like Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth, were it still on the air?  We sure didn’t like it when Bill Maher’s advertisers got him kicked off the terrestrial airwaves. Personally I don’t want advertisers getting involved with the Coulter debate either.

As disgusting as she is, I think she should be allowed a forum. Sad as it is, she represents a segment of our society and that makes her relevant. It sucks that many agree with her, but letting her views be heard is what this country is all about. The only acceptable way to combat this IMHO is to promote opposing voices.

However, if Leno was only offering up Coulter like viewpoints on his show and not booking opposing voices too, I would be all for a boycott. I don’t think that’s the case here as Leno books many liberal guests on his show as well.

Then my response.

Sorry, but you don’t get this.  And you’re completely wrong.
That Coulter is now “acceptable” to mainstream media is an enormous red flag in the increasingly fascist direction of our country.  Thuggery and hate speech are engaged in by fascists consciously and precisely to demonize and ultimately deny the humanity of those they attack.  It’s much easier then to haul them to the ovens with little protest from the great “undecideds.”

Brian Nowhere again.

I don’t agree..doesn’t make me wrong (none / 0)
I agree that Coulter’s popularity is a red flag to the coming fascism, which is exactly why it needs to be visible.
If you had a strange lump on your body would you just put a band-aid over it and try and forget it’s there? Coulter is merely a symptom, she is not the disease. In fact I think in many ways she helps our cause as she paints the true face on what Republicans really stand for; hate, racism, selfishness, greed, callousness et al.

Without her presence, republicans will just tune in to George Will and be treated to a completely reasonable looking representation of truly reprehensible ideas. Not so with Coulter, for all her nastiness, she at least represents an honest portrayal of what Republicanism really is.

So, Fight to promote the voices you agree with. Fight to make liberal voices be heard. If you fight to silence those you disagree with thorough intimidation, IMHO, you’re really just becoming a part of the disease, not part of the cure.

To which I responded.

Re: doesn’t make me wrong..Yes It Does (none / 0)

Coulter is merely a symptom, she is not the disease.

Like I said, you don’t get it.  Coulter is the disease.  It’s called fascism.  It uses her kind of verbal thuggery and the thuggery practiced by the “spontaneous” mob of Republican Congressional staffers who showed up at the recounts in Florida after the theft of the 2000 election.  While you’re defending their right to be fascists, they’ll either imprison or kill you.  

So, Fight to promote the voices you agree with. Fight to make liberal voices be heard. If you fight to silence those you disagree with thorough intimidation, IMHO, you’re really just becoming a part of the disease, not part of the cure.

The issue isn’t whether in America fascists have the right to speak, of course they do, the issue is that we on the left must create consequences for the media that promotes this garbage.

You are bordering on ostrich-hood with your last sentence.  Do you think the Coulters of the world are intimated by your “fight to make liberal voices heard?”  On the other hand, what do you think Steven D’s diary about consequences for the media if they want to promote fascist thuggery was if not just that?

Finally, ask Republicans if Coulter represents Republicanism? Ask Olympia Snowe, ask even blowing in the wind politicians like John McCain and Arlen Specter, if they think Coulter’s fascism represents them.

The fascist Bush Administration and its fascist fellow travellers like Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, et. al. are the aberration that the fucking American media, in order to make mo’ money, is pandering too.  That’s what this is all about.

Jesus exhorted his disciples to have the innocence of the dove, but the wisdom of the serpent.  The kind of whimpy liberalism your comments express is what our opponents think liberalism is.  Find a damn snake.

But for the fact that I went a little over the top in my last comment about ostriches and snakes, this exchange is a good illumination of what I think is a false liberal quandry.  How can we maintain our support for free speech and still do battle with those like Coulter who would not only deny our right to free speech, but given enough power, deny our citizenship, our humanity, and finally our lives?

Steven D. has found one good way to do this.  Make the media and its corporate sugar daddies feel consequences to their pandering to the fascists.  Don’t let our disgust at the fascist Bush Administration and how servile it is to the farthest of the Right.  Non fascist Republicans are looking for someone to save them too.

Finally, the marketplace of ideas is a stupid metaphor.  The marketplace may be an efficient way to sell cars, laundry soap, or politicians.  But it is not the way ideas work.  The difference between a Honda and a Buick is a matter of choice and opinion.  The difference between one and idea and another in many cases is the difference between truth and falsity.  Proponents of Intelligent Design like the idea of a marketplace of ideas.  Then they can market bullshit for truth.  

The place where ideas and opinions have intercourse is not a marketplace, but a battleground.  The quicker progressives get it, the better.  

Since I was tired of political stuff, I had to go to the only other thing worth talking about.  

Cross-posted at http://rescuejesus.blogspot.com/

Jesus, Baptism and The End is Not Near

One of the central tenets of American Christianity as it is professed by theological and political conservatives is that Jesus is fully God, that he existed at the creation of the world and that, as God, has a plan for His creation. If that is the case, why was Jesus wrong about his supposed return to earth after his death and resurrection? He said He would come in glory before this generation was gone. We’re still waiting, and conservative Christians embarrass themselves with all sorts of childlike excuses and fantasy reasons to explain this away. Either God is wrong about the most central part of His program, or Jesus isn’t God in that sense. Jesus himself, as a devout Jew, would have thought this equation of Jesus=YHWH to be the vilest blasphemy.

What did Jesus himself think? If he thought of himself as God and therefore without sin or blemish, why did he go to the Jordan River to be baptized by John for the redemption of sins?

Josephus, a 1st century Jewish historian, describes John the Baptist this way.

“When others too joined the crowds about him because they were aroused to the highest degree by his speeches, Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that had so great an effect on mankind might lead to some form of sedition, for it looked as if they would be guided by John in everything that they did. Herod decided, therefore, that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising, than to wait for an upheaval.”

Josephus goes on to explain that because of this reasoning Herod had John arrested and put to death. Maybe these words of John explain why Herod killed him.

“You offspring of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming fury? Change your ways if you hve changed your mind.” And later, “He will overwhelm yo with holy spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat to his granary. The chaff he will burn with a fire that no one can put out.”

To clearly understand what John meant we have to understand who and what he was speaking against. What was it that God was going to burn away? Virgil, the Fox News of the Rome, wrote a poem about the Empire.

“Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth’s peoples–for your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.”

A Roman historian displayed a different view; that of the conquered whether in Britain, Gaul, or Judea. “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and call it peace.” (Parenthetically, this is an accurate description of the American fool’s errand in Iraq).

How can people respond to imperial occupation? We see can variants of these responses in our times. First, people can militarily fight and most likely be crushed, and then engage in insurgency often led by charasmatic figures who call for holy war against the imperial force. Or they can let God do it, and announce that God’s power will accomplish what they cannot and very soon wipe the imperial scourge off the face of the earth. The first response was the response of the Zealots in the 1st century, the second response that of John the Baptist and a whole succession of Jewish apocalyptic prophets all the way up to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.

Jesus began his resistance to the Roman Empire as a follower of John. He was baptized for the forgiveness of sins by John, and Christian apologists from the very beginning have tried to explain this away. The Gospel of Mark, written first, simply says that John baptized Jesus “for the forgiveness of sins” and then proceeds to embellish that with a voice from heaven stating “you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Matthew has the Baptist complain, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” And John, the last canonical Gospel written, changes the situation completely by having John call Jesus the Son of God and give no account of an actual baptism. The trend from the self-identification of Jesus as a follower of John and as someone needing baptism, to John calling Jesus the Son of God and not baptizing him at all reflects the progress of a battle to comes to grips with Jesus and divinity that wasn’t setlted until well into the fourth century CE.

What does baptism have to do with God’s coming to wipe the Roman Empire off the face of the earth? Baptism for the forgiveness of sins was John’s response to the imagined coming of God to separate the wheat (those baptized) from the chaff (imperial oppressors and their puppets). It was his way to prepare for the coming conflagration.

That Jesus was baptized indicates that he believed the same thing. However, that Jesus spoke of what the King James version calls the “Kingdom of God” indicates that he went beyond John’s apocalyptic notions to something much more threatening to the Roman Empire. The translators of the Bible who gave us the King Jame’s version called the greek term basileia kingdom in English. This expresses their provincialism and their obsequiousness. Basileia tou theou is better translated as God’s imperial rule and was used by Jesus as the antidote to Roman imperial rule.

John called for people to be baptized and forgiven and then to wait for God in this new clean state.

Jesus called for people to become citizen’s of God’s imperial rule because God is waiting for us, here and now. And this requires that we act.

God is waiting for us to bring forth justice and righteousness. He won’t come on a fiery chariot to do it for us. He expects us to do it ourselves. Jesus did not call for military action against Rome and its Judean and Gallilean puppets. He called for, and he and his followers actually put it place, a program more radical and seditious: to live as if already in God’s empire, right now, right here, and act as if justice and righteousness are the only criteria for judgement and action. Not economics, not power politics to elevate one’s clan above all others, not commerical dominance: justice and righteousness. Jesus was not interested in personal piety which is what American Christians want to reduce him to. He was calling for bringing forth justice and righteousness. Human beings had to do this, God was waiting. Those, like the Baptizer, who wanted to claim a personal piety through baptism and wait for God, and those, like Barabas who wanted to kill as many imperial occupiers and Judean collaborators as possible, are dead ends. The former will wait forever for a God who is not coming because God waits for us. The latter are lost because God demands that we bring force justice and righteousness, not death and destruction.

No wonder Christians want to idolize Jesus. To follow him is simply too damn difficult. The road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions, it’s paved with Christians waiting for God to do what God demands they do themselves.

If this doesn’t give every normal American a chill, then you’ve been infected by the fascist culture war bug.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060606_sunsara_taylor_preconception/

Read this and weep.  I think this story dovetails very nicely with the BT piece on Rick Warren’s wife and her AIDS photo op in setting out the really fucked up position of the American fascist side of the so called culture war.

Taylor states that the import of the CDC pronouncement is that women are not to be considered as independent human actors in charge of their own lives but as  potential vessels for potential life.  

The CDC report calls for a radical shift in medical care so that at every point of interaction, women’s doctors are to stage “interventions” to make sure they are healthy and prepared to give birth. Want to take your newborn in for a checkup or your 8-year-old in for a high fever? Expect an “intervention” into your eating habits, weight and behavioral risk factors.

Got diabetes or epilepsy and looking for the care that is best for you? Wrong approach, says the CDC: “Separating childbearing from the management of chronic health problems and infectious diseases places women, their future pregnancies, and their future children at unnecessary risk.”

Noting that attitudes and behavior related to childbearing and childbearing preparedness are “influenced by childhood experiences and prevailing social norms among adults,” the CDC calls for a cultural and media crusade aimed at changing “public attitudes” about “the importance of preconception health behaviors,” including the risks of tobacco use, alcohol, obesity, and diet.

The report bemoans the fact that half of all pregnancies are unplanned, and focuses in on the potential harm caused to fetuses by their female incubators between the time of an unexpected conception and the recognition of pregnancy. Never mind making it easier for women to decide for themselves whether or not to become pregnant. Never mind ensuring that women have the ability to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Not once, in its entire 43 pages, does the CDC’s report even mention birth control or elective abortion.

Instead, the CDC report is framed in and extends the kind of logic that has galvanized the anti-abortion movement for years. Now, not only is the developing life of a fetus–a potential human being–considered more valuable and important than the life of the mother–but the potential life of a nonexistent fetus takes precedence over the life of the woman.

Just so we understand the context of the CDC report,

……, get prepared for the religious fanatics who terrorize women at the doors of abortion clinics to broaden their harassment against women who enter bars, smoke cigarettes or eat at McDonald’s. Get ready for the prosecution of women who engage in these activities for crimes against their future fetuses. And get ready for calls to weed out and even sterilize women who are deemed by the state to be unfit to bear children.

Sound too extreme? Wake up and look around!

Already, legions of theocratic lawyers are constructing legal defenses for the fundamentalist pharmacists who refuse to fill women’s prescriptions for birth control.

Already, Louisiana has joined South Dakota in banning abortion throughout the state.

Already, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others have called for the execution of abortion providers.

Already, laws passed to “protect” fetuses have been used to jail people who, lacking safe and destigmatized access to legal abortions, either self-induced an abortion or helped a woman induce her own voluntary abortion.

Consider that the Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, the leader of Virginia-based Human Life International, has called the repressive anti-abortion laws in El Salvador “an inspiration.” As The New York Times Magazine said in describing the situation in El Salvador: “In the event that the woman’s illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government’s doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.

Expect the first murder trial for juvenile males caught masturbating by their parents in about 2010.  I’m sure each peter pumping perpetrator will be charged for about a million counts of masturbatory murder, one for every single one of those little flagellating sperm shot out to their deaths.  

Let’s all throw away our condoms, birth control pills, diaphragms, viagara, cialis (sob), Playboy, Penthouse, Maxim, Esquire, Time, Newsweek and that damn Christian Science Monitor and go right avay and make der babies for der Dubya.  Heil Dubya. (I did that in my best Peter Sellers imitation from Dr. Strangelove).

Elizabeth Drew has an excellent piece in The New York Review of Books, eloquently titled, simply, Power Grab.  

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19092

In it she demonstrates that Bush’s White House is carrying out attacks on every facet of the federal government that can be used to confront the power of the Executive through the cowardly (my designation, not hers) use of “signing statements.”  She quotes Chuck Hagel

There’s a very clear pattern of aggressively asserting executive power, and the Congress has essentially been complicit in letting him do it. The key is that Bush has a Republican Congress; of course if it was a Clinton presidency we’d be holding hearings.

I think what Bush has done in this area is impeachable.  

According to an article in The Boston Globe, Bush has claimed the right to ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president. He has unilaterally overruled Congress on a broad range of matters, refusing, for example, to accept a requirement for more diversity in awarding government science scholarships. He has overruled numerous provisions of congressional appropriations bills that he felt impinged on his executive power. He has also overruled Congress’s requirement that he report back to it on how he has implemented a number of laws. Moreover, he has refused to enforce laws protecting whistle-blowers and providing safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Bush has also used signing statements to place severe limits on the inspectors general created by Congress to oversee federal activities, including two officials who were supposed to inspect and report to Congress on the US occupation of Iraq.

This is precisely what makes Bush a coward, the spots he has shown his entire easy silver spoon fed life.

The President could of course veto a bill he doesn’t like and publicly argue his objections to it. He would then run the risk that Congress would override his veto. Instead, Bush has chosen a method that is largely hidden and is difficult to challenge.

Rather than publicly stand up and battle a bill he doesn’t like, Bush skulks around under the cover of an imagined Executive Power and does what he wants anyway.  Is there any greater indication of an infantile, immature human being than this?  This is the Presidential equivalent of taking his toys and going home.  Nah, that’s a much too easy description of what is at its heart a fascist coup d’etat

Mother Jones has an interview with Jimmy Carter in which Carter talks about the intersection of religious and political fundamentalism that has corrupted the country.  

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/06/jimmy_carter.html

They are talking about Carter’s newest book Our Endangered Values.  The interview is worth the read, as is the book.  In the interview Carter identifies 1979 as the time of origin of this Faustian bargain on the Right.

I think it was in 1979, when future fundamentalists took control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a very important religious and political factor in this country. After that, the Southern Baptist Convention had almost diametrically opposite basic principles than it had previously followed, and there’s been an evolution within the Convention toward a more and more rigid and strict creed that embodies the fundamentalist principles that I mention in the book.

Now, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the elementary principle of fundamentalism has existed for ages, and it obviously permeates other religions as well, such as Islam and Hinduism and others. But this trend continued and, parallel to it, there was in effect a merger of the fundamentalist Christian leaders and the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And for the last 25 years or so, that merger has become more pronounced and more evident.

MJ.com: Which of the two strains of fundamentalism do you see as leading the other?

JC: I wouldn’t say leading, but both are influencing each other. In the past, there have been two parallel premises for the separation of church and state. One obviously is what Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, when he said we should build a wall between the church and state. And in the Christian faith, we all remember that Christ said, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” This also indicates that there should be a clear separation.

But those premises have been publicly disavowed or challenged by Pat Robertson on the religious side, and even by the former chief justice of the Supreme Court [William Rehnquist]. But nowadays, with the allocation of billions of dollars through what President Bush calls a faith-based initiative, taxpayers’ money is distributed to churches and other religious institutions that will comply with the basic principles of the present political administration. And there’s no doubt that in public conventions and in individual church speeches and sermons, there’s been a prevalent inclination to endorse candidates, primarily Republican candidates.

I don’t share Carter’s opinion of the pre-1979 Southern Baptist Convention. I think it’s been misguided, mistaken, ignorant and arrogant for its entire history, going all the way back to its roots in Puritanism.  Be that as it may, what interested me in this interview was that Carter comes close to saying what I think any and every self-respecting Christian should be saying.  Fundamentalists are an existential prevarication that turns the teaching of Jesus on their head.  Fundamentalists are those who have said yes to Satan in the temptation in the wilderness.

Michael Tomasky has written an article for The American Prospect’s current issue titled “Party in Search of a Notion.”  Everyone who is interested in creating a new Democratic majority party should read Tomasky’s compelling argument: that we must recreate what we as Democrats once had, the notion that we stand for the common good rather than for simply a collection of a bunch of individual or interest groups rights.  This rediscovery of our own liberal legacy which was responsible for almost 100% of the good life in America for the last fifty years of the twentieth century is what will not only enliven the Democratic Party but the democratic heart of our country.

Here’s a link: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11400

Almost as if on cue, Nancy Pelosi demonstrated the need for just this approach on Meet the Press.  Here’s what Tomasky wrote in the Prospect Online.

So Nancy Pelosi was on Meet the Press Sunday, and I thought she was doing pretty well as she was talking up the Democrats’ plan for energy independence. Then Tim Russert hit her with this:

RUSSERT: But this will be huge subsidies to bring it about. Would you be willing to roll back the Bush tax cut to pay for it?
PELOSI: This isn’t — we are willing to put all of our, our initiatives on the table. We think they compete very well. One thing we’ll roll back immediately are the Bush subsidies and royalty holidays, which are around $20 billion.

RUSSERT: But would you repeal the Bush tax cut?

PELOSI: Well, what I’m — what we’re talking about here on energy independence is something that will save the American people money.

RUSSERT: But it will take — it all takes money, Congressman [sic]. The Brazilian government has subsidized their industry.

PELOSI: Yeah.

RUSSERT: Would you be willing to roll back the Bush tax cuts?

PELOSI: I’ll tell you something, if we could bring the war in Iraq to a conclusion, we would save a lot of money and could declare energy independence and this is the, this is the OPEC countries’ worst nightmare, that we would be energy independent. The technology is there, the commitment is there, Democrats have a goal. We have a plan. We have a timetable to accomplish it, and we intend to do so. And you know what? Do you know what we spend? Fifty billion dollars a year just protecting the sea lanes for the oil to come from the Middle East. That money can be spent to invest in this.

RUSSERT: But why are you so reluctant to say you’ll roll back the Bush tax cuts? Most Democrats voted against them.

PELOSI: Well, I, myself, am against them. But the point is…

Tomasky points out that it was disappointing that Pelosi could not or would not simply state what so importantly makes us different from the Republicans on this particular issue and on so many more.  Pelosi would not make an argument that contrasts a priority of the common good against one of individual benefits.

And then he goes on to state what to me should be the central Democratic Party principle that gets restated over and over.

What the country needs is a Democrat who will say something like the following:

“Look, if what you want is more and more tax cuts, then you better go ahead and vote Republican, because that’s what Republicans will do. But look around you. We have needs as a people. All of us agree, for example, that we need to wean ourselves off foreign oil. We can do that as Americans. But we can’t do it through tax cuts. You and your neighbors can’t get together, pool your tax cuts, and create a fund to encourage businesses to invest more in bio-fuels. I’m afraid, my fellow Americans, that like it or not, only the federal government can do that. So you need to decide: If you just want tax cuts, and you wanna kick the problem of energy independence down the road to your children and grandchildren when it may be too late, then vote Republican. If you want to be serious about trying to do something about this problem, then you better vote for me, because I’ll do something about, and the Republicans won’t.”

That’s a common-good argument. Am I missing something? It just doesn’t sound that difficult to me. It will be controversial at first. The wingnuts will bray in the expected fashion, and the media will ape them and scream about Democrats raising taxes. But then, if my mythical Democrat just keeps saying it and doesn’t apologize, at some point, a corner will be turned. A poll will find a surprising number of people actually agreeing with this Democrat on substance, and giving him/her some props for sticking to his/her guns.

This is the principle that should be the foundation of all specific Democratic policy statements, whether it’s energy independence, health care, Social Security, education, defense spending, you name it.  Tomasky has stated very clearly what all of us have been nibbling around the edge of.

Ralph, you ignorant, arrogant shithead.  Thanks for the gift that keeps on giving…..an ignorant, arrogant shithead for President, one that isn’t you.

Here’s why we’re are screwed in Iraq in particular and in foreign policy in general.  From the New Yorker, George Packer on Dubya.

Last week, in California, he described his policymaking process in unmistakably clear terms. “I base a lot of my foreign-policy decisions on some things that I think are true,” he said. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.”

The really scary thing is the Republican cynical manipulation of the other right wing Christian lunatics who think in the same shallow, infantile way about foreign policy, and that this manipulation allows them to elect an ignorant arrogant shithead that isn’t Ralph Nader, and that John Kerry couldn’t bury this guy.

Some random thoughts that make a point, I think.

Oil companies get huge wood over Bush policies and Cheney (I’m sure medically aided) gets even huger wood because he’s getting paid by Big Oil as a sitting Vice President.  As Napoleon Dynamite would say…”Sweet.”

The government is bankrupt….I mean really bankrupt….not as a metaphor for Bush’s fucked up polcies.

Bush has never met a Saudi prince he didn’t like or hold hands with.  (For the life of me, I can’t figure out which one runs home and does a Howard Hughes on their hands first.)

Bush compromised the nation’s safety and defense by halting the action against al Quaeda and invaded Iraq for (pick one) the following reasons; to get those damn WMD, to revenge Bush Daddy, to bring democracy (and our brand of torture) to the Middle East because there’s so little of one and so much of the other, to secure our access to cheap oil, and finally to see if the invasion would make Cheney’s priapus go down.

Now Bush wants to invade Iran to make sure they don’t develop nuclear weapons.  And he can’t figure out why nobody believes the little fucking wolf-cryer.

Get what all  these things to: Jack Up the Price of Oil.  Every oil analyst says that the uncertain situation in Iran and Iraq is they key factor in skyrocketing oil prices. Which is precisely this Prez’nit’s agenda.  

Thank God Karl Marx is down but not out.  His analysis of capitallism is still the best ever, even though his revolutionary notions (funded by the way by Engels’s rich industrialist father) were feverish fantasies.

Back in the “good old days” capitalists actually gave a shit about their home country.  Now global capitalism is all about the free flow of capital into the hands of fewer and fewer people , the free flow of cheap labor and the free flow of jobs to the locaiton where even cheaper labor can be found, NAFTA, WTO, etc etc.  

It’s time to resurrect Wobblies. It’s time for “taxpayers” to become citizens again and take back their own government and subject the whims of capitalism to the regulation of what’s good for people.  

And it’s time to impeach the peach of shit that currently lives in the White House.  

This short diary breaks all the diary rules I can think of: it’s too short, and it’s about a topic all ready covered and covered and covered (hey, I’m trying to make this diary longer), etc. etc. etc….

But I can’t help it: ever since Bush’s little tirade over questions about Rumsfeld I’ve been dying to get to my laptop so I could write this about an infantile human being.

Papa Prez’nit and Prez’nit Mama must be so proud of their precocious, petulant, powerful people pleasin’,progeny of a Prez’nit(wit).

I just know there are wordsmith’s out there who can do much better.

Jane Hamsher, who blogs at firedoglake, wrote this on The Huffington Post where Ariana Huffington is getting all gooey about Gingrich’s alleged change of heart on the Iraq war.  I like that Hamsher wants to wait to see genuine actions from Newty Newtsterton.

I am intrinsically, temperamentally and constitutionally opposed to allowing Newt Gingrich and other architects of war to evade responsibility for their actions and give themselves political cover by handing them a “free pass” for their zealous efforts to land us in the middle of this quagmire.

Hamsher reminds us of all the times Gingrich was slandering anyone who spoke out against the war as a traitor and as giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

Here’s a link to a Glenn Greewald piece in AlterNet that outlines Gingrich’s water carrying for the Liars who got us into this quagmire.  

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/34878/

Gingrich must be held accountable for his words.  In America, thank god still and hopefully for a long time, we can all say what we think.  But we must all take ownership and accountability for what we say.  Speech, in politics, is also action.  So, as Hamsher puts it…..

Compare the criticisms made by Gingrich of the President’s illegal eavesdropping and his Iraq policies to this truly disgusting declaration made by him just a few months ago on Hannity & Colmes:

“I think it’s quite clear as you point out, Sean, that from this tape, that bin Laden and his lieutenants are monitoring the American news media, they’re monitoring public opinion polling, and I suspect they take a great deal of comfort when they see people attacking United States policies.”

This next quote is the whole point.

There is clearly a sea change going on. The self-interested rats who propped up this Administration with blind loyalty for the last five years are now jumping ship as it sinks, desperately trying to save themselves by showing some extremely belated autonomy and independence. But where were Gingrich, Conway and Sensenbrenner for the last five years while “the most politically and substantively inept (administration) that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century” inflicted unquantifiable, arguably irreversible damage on our nation? They were accusing Administration critics of lacking patriotism and being on the side of terrorists, and they cannot be allowed to distance themselves now from the Administration to which they tied themselves.

Newt didn’t just support the war.  In addition to sitting on the Defense Policy Board and being one of its more enthusiastic cheerleaders, he created a climate where it became impossible to question the war, the rationales given for it or any of the disastrous decisions made by George W. Bush by branding people who did so as anti-American turncoats.

This is from the Greenwald piece on AlterNet and it’s exactly to the point.

The greatest evil of the last five years isn’t that our government pursued disastrous and illegal policies, it’s that the administration and its supporters attempted to immunize themselves from criticism for those actions, thus depriving our democracy of its greatest strength. To watch the people responsible for that dissent-quashing now stand up and voice the very criticisms they’ve long equated with treason is far too infuriating to celebrate. It is important to ensure that the people responsible for the indescribable mess our country is in on so many levels not be allowed to extricate themselves from responsibility. There has been one political faction which has run every part of our country for the last five years and they are responsible for everything that has happened. We know who they are and it is critically important that they not be permitted to play-act as a legitimate opposition.

So, Newt, Screw You for jumping on what you think is now a bandwagon for whatever political benefit you think you’ll get out it.  If you want to be a part of the anti war movement, as my favorite Cuban would say, “Newtsie, you’ve gotta lot of ‘splainin’ to do.”

Until you publicly acknowledge your assholitude for slandering good Americans, Fuck You Newt, Bite Me Newt, Hey Newt….Go Hunting with Dick Cheney.