Tannishblog

As the far left crows about a “new poll” that shows a majority of Americans now favor impeachment proceeding should it be proved that George W-is-for-wiretapping Bush did indeed “eavesdrop” on Americans without court approval, those on the right scream about how we’re at war!!! And all’s fair in love and war… or something like that. The argument, as near as I can parse, is that our Commander-in-Chief has near god-like powers that cannot be questioned, must not be debated until our troops come home bathed in glory from the battlefield, a la 1945.

Its time to stop watching Hogan’s Heroes folks: those days are over. One terrorist attack, however successful, does not create an ongoing threat. Especially so when one considers that it took almost a decade to prepare for this one since the last time “terrorists” tried to bomb the twin towers. Back then we didn’t call them that, yet.

Yet today, in response perhaps, to Mr. Bush’s falling polls and to out-crow the lefties, the news let out that a “senior” official at the US State department thinks another terrorist attack to be “very high.” This trick is well worn. During the years following 9/11, every reasonable inquiry into the machinations of the bush administration was followed by a nightly update on the red-orange-yellow terror alert status; the worse the criticism, the redder the alert. It amazes me still, how the US intelligence service can have so many experts tipping off the media without resulting in a breach of security. So here we go again, with the “President Who Cried Terrorist” playing the newswire like a harp string. How boring!

Do I think danger is real? Yes: I fear my own government. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop; the first one fell when we invaded Iraq, creating a haven and a training field for counter-American forces to learn what they can about the weaknesses in our high-tech army. Next, we’ll probably do something really stupid, like bore the American people with repeated, fictitious terror alerts, until no one gives a damn anymore, thereby opening the field for the same counter-American operatives to recruit from the hate groups we already have, like white supremacists, and neo—Nazis. Arm these whitebread yahoos with money and bombs, and let them loose on their fellow Americans: now, that would create havoc. Then our good ol’ boy government can try use the same tactics - so helpful for the spread of Democracy in Iraq - locally. White phosphorus, anyone?

While our Corporate-owned Commander-in-Chief is busy prepping national opinion for the next phase of his War Against non-Christians, the latest item on a lengthening list of failure emerges in his (lack of) domestic policy:

From the Washington Post:

Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation’s sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines.

Computer glitches, overloaded telephone lines and poorly trained pharmacists are being blamed for mix-ups that have resulted in the worst of unintended consequences: As many as 6.4 million low-income seniors, who until Dec. 31 received their medications free, suddenly find themselves navigating an insurance maze of large deductibles, co-payments and outright denial of coverage

You’ve got to hand it to him, he is consistent: Katrina wiped out half a state, and his administration just jeeps warring, the ripple effects of the storm that devastated New Orleans will likely have adverse affects on the Republican base throughout the south, but no one cares. Now, the administration is alienating the aging baby boomer generation, a voting bloc most politicians have been pandering to for decades. All the while the Bushoviks are killing off the youngest voting-age demographic in a can’t-win war against… whatever it’s against.

What’s a mid-lifer like myself supposed to do – watch as my mother goes blind filling out forms in order to get the glaucoma medicine the government used to provide, or watch as my nephew proudly enlists his way into a body bag?

While my nephew tromps through the sand on his way to the next bullet, his poor wife struggles with their daughter’s inner-city school district to provide assistance because she’s a slow learner. She’s not disabled, by the government’s definition; she just needs more help because her family lives next to the Chicago River, which has for years shown signs of high mercury content, and this proximity to toxins has slightly affected the poor child’s higher reasoning skills.

Ahh… Life in America: the greatest nation on earth; soon to be – if our administration has its way – the only nation on earth. Meanwhile every good Chicagoan can look the other way today and shout: “Go Bears!”

The Oscar season is upon us. Does anyone care? Sure, as an industry measuring stick of profitability, the Oscars are important. As a commercial for recent movies and upcoming DVD releases it can’t be beat. Besides that, it stokes the already inflated egos of the Hollywood firmament - as if that needs doing…

Can anyone tell me what import the Oscar ceremony with its attendant pomposity contains? Beyond the occasional well-delivered punch line, the whole thing is boring. Yet every year, I read in the news, prognostications, tidbit and vignettes aimed to bolster the ceremony to superbowl status. As I imagine beautiful people strut before cameras in self-serving splendor, I try to envision starving children in war torn areas who, because America is so full of its self, cannot receive the medical benefits of education – let alone food and peace – they need to thrive. As I think of the billions of dollars wasted to feed and industry of sycophants and drama queens, of technogeeks and theatricks, I cringe. There are so many people suffering in this world, caused indirectly from America’s hoarding of its money. We, a warmongering state of the richest, most ignorant and self-consumed humans on the planet, must wake up to the plight of the rest of humanity, as we leech mine gold in Indonesia, force slaves to dig up our diamonds in Africa, go to war to preserve an unfair advantage in the dwindling oil reserves. Because of these things and more, thousands are dying and suffering.

Go ahead, play ostrich and stick you heads in the tube for another night of ignoring the planet. When you die from your excesses, why should you care what the world looks like? It’s not like you’ll be coming back…

While I froth over the Abramoff story, I just can’t get worked up over Judge Alito. I’m not yawning, here, I’m like the guy strapped to a chair watching Oprah reruns for a fortnight… Dazed senseless, only his pulse shows life. And so it is with this whole telethon.

Every Night I get tough worded emails on how the Dems of this group or that group are going to splatter the walls with judicial chutney. Three times in these correspondences are links to facilitate donations to the group du jour. When I read the transcripts, the ever-so-polite snippets, I hear a weakness that belies the tough words: I’m glad I resisted donating.

I’m not convinced of the left handed rhetoric. John Bolton gave me the willies, but Sam Alito, admittedly right-minded, is no devil. No: For the Democrats to rally against him is to throw paper into a hurricane. He is at worst a small representation of a larger ill, one that is curing itself without foam-flecked Democratic resistance, one that proves that a model of extremism cannot remain sustainable as a function of government within even as faulty republic as ours.

Tom DeLay would agree, that is if he was the kind of person given to self-reflection and soul searching. Never mind.

Even the Great White Newt (Gingrich) is warning, to a few unfortunates, of the dangers of excess. He should know.

I predict when the spaghetti settles, Samuel Alito will be appointed. There’s just not enough public support or enough logic against this. Once again my party-of-choice will wake up with its bum in the breeze looking foolish.

Now that really emits a sigh. (SIGH)

In the name of National Security, I feel less secure from my own government.

First, a devilish troika of National ID Cards, GPS tracking of people and their devices, and monitoring credit card purchases would track anyone’s movements for any entity tapped into a national database, or for anyone who can provide a subpoena. Same thing. Next, we learn that the Feds are now free to wiretap - I mean eavesdrop - on any citizen at any time - openly endorsed by the Bushoviks. Now, I learn that the border patrol has been opening private correspondence in the name of National Security.

Add our recent penchant for holding “detainees” for indefinite periods to the mix, and I see a New American Century of jackbooted stormtroopers knocking on doors next. Has anyone vanished without a trace in the US of A yet? Soon, perhaps, beginning with the lefty bloggers…

As a species, humans fear. A ruler knows that the mob can be a deadly force if fear overtakes it. Despots have longed understood the value in instilling fear as means of control. Organized religion, capitalizing as is does the fear of the unknown, cannot exist without stoking the fires of uncertainty.

As individuals, we spend time and energy to avoid what we fear, even to our detriment. Avoidance of what discomforts us can further our discomfort. A man I know doesn’t like computers. In a sense, he fears what he doesn’t know and what he does not want to learn. As a result, he is willing to give up his job because it increasingly involves a computer to document his actions, to communicate throughout the corporation, to keep track of the workload. Fear of the unknown, however benign the unknown may be, rules his actions and forces his decisions. This fear causes personal anxiety and organizational disarray within the workforce. One man’s fear affects everyone around him.

People can adopt a collective, social fear as well. September 11, 2001 caused a mass hysteria of societal fear we are still reconciling today. Our leaders have capitalized on this fear to create a veritable blank check for legislation over the past few years. Only now, as the fear subsides, can we begin to understand how our emotional response to a tragedy of such proportion can influence the entire world. If tempered with reason, typical human emotions in response to 9/11 – anger, bitterness, retribution – are to some degree rationalized into a coherent response. Fear, however, cannot treat with reason. Because we as a nation fear another terrorist attack, we condone actions we otherwise would be horrified to contemplate, we look away as our military overcompensates for the wrongs against our nation, and we rationalize preemptive actions that have no bearing upon the actual causes of the terrorist attack itself.

In all of our brief national history, I find no example where America has ever given into fear as we have in this new century. As a people, we are inundated with alerts aimed at this most influential emotion: terror attacks and warning; avian flu; racism; food and environmental allergies; pollution and its affects; corrupt businesses; corrupt government; mass murderers; child molesters; car thieves… the list is endless. The media gleefully panders to our fear, because this means pennies in their pockets; the government eagerly panders to our fears because this creates a passive and more malleable population.

The past century of increased information overload has come with a price. Freedoms have increased, as affluence has increased: We are now free to fear everything around us. This new entitlement, handed out surreptitiously, is in reality anti-freedom. Fear shackles our minds. We are no longer free to let our children play outdoors, to sleep with our doors unlocked, to strike a conversation with a fellow shopper in the mall. We do not dare to leave our cars unlocked; we buy mace and take self-defense lessons. Our children are shuttled from building to car to building, breathing filtered air and feeling filtered sunlight in their skins. We are in constant connection with our teenagers via cell phones which act as a dog leash and masquerade as a safety net.

We fear, and this fear tells us what to buy and how to act. It shuts us off from each other. We vote for people who can stoke this fear. Therefore, we turn our minds off with a thousand entertainments to avoid looking at our fear, investigating our lives and the diminished lifestyles we silently, fearfully accept. Our media, the corporations who profit by selling into it, and by the government whose job becomes easier because of it, repackage fear. Collectively, these forces rename fear as “freedom”.

And we believe it.

Is this blood money? Jack Abramoff, now famous for screwing Native Americans, has inadvertently given them a windfall. As congress sheds the ill-gotten gains of American-styled, high stakes governance. As Rome learned long ago, greed drives republics: More so in this, the worlds richest economy. Just as white America cannot rid itself of the stigma of slavery and its attendant racism; neither can it rid itself of the taint of genocide of indigenous populations. Fully aware of white man’s disgusting histories in America, our congressional leaders react with automatic guilt and try to rid ourselves of questionable proceeds as fast as possible.

Some of the Native American leaders show confusion by our response, feeling a return of their campaign contributions would undermine their voice in government. Some take a more practical approach: take the money and run. Now, that’s a truly American reaction. Although the unscrupulously diverted funds would provide no benefit to native tribes while in the coffers of officials, the return of them may indeed help the many struggling poor on our reservations. Let’s all praise the Law of Unintended Consequences, for providing justice beyond the reach of American law or judiciary precedence. The irony is as thick as the benefits are clear.

Just when I thought my bullshitometer was fixed form the other night’s utterance form Jack Abramoff, it moans loudly after trying the digest this WaPo quote:

“He defrauded the tribes, he defrauded his law firms, so why isn’t it that he defrauded public officials, as well?” asked Jan W. Baran, an attorney at Wiley Rein & Fielding. “Proving somebody accepted campaign contributions and expense-paid trips and then did something of benefit for Abramoff is not in and of itself proving bribery.”

This is said in attempt to discredit Jack before he even begins to testify against our enlightened leaders. What I anticipate to be most interesting to watch about this latest Republican scandal (I’ve lost count already!) is just how low the affected and their attorneys will stoop to deflect blame or distract from their actions. It’s starting already.

On a side thought, I wonder how many future indictees will be on the roster for “Justice Sunday III,” the latest attempt of the extreme right to fuse politics and the pulpit into a holy crucible of power.

Big Dick Cheney says the “eavesdropping program,” (also known as illegal wiretapping to us outsiders) might have prevented 9/11. After sipping some coffee over that thought, I propose a short list of other things that “might have prevented 9/11.”

• Paying attention to reports from previous incumbents on issues of the day during administration “changing of the guard” period following election.
• Locking up all angry-looking non-whites on general suspicion (Yes. You, too Condoleeza.).
• Immediate establishment of United States of Christianity and announcing any un-American behavior to be act against God.
• Ask Pat Robertson to interpret to bible to prove that George W. Bush is anointed by God to become the Supreme Leader of the Known Universe, then to change by executive order term limits for American presidents to life terms.
• Nuke the entire Middle East.
• Force the nearly half of Americans who oppose Bush to wear colorful scraps of cloth on their outer clothing for easy identification, then seize all their assets in the name of National Security to sell on EBAY overseas, refilling campaign coffers and legal funds for Republicans.

Any or all of these actions “might have prevented 9/11.” The problem lies in proving this. We’ll never know for sure. What we can be sure of is that our government’s “eavesdropping program” has not found a guilty person subverting national security in the many days following 9/11; No bad guys have been implicated due to these questionable tactics, therefore no reason exists to sustain these questionable tactics.

Personally, I’m becoming more convinced our national security, such as it is, would be better served by throwing out the pompous, fractious and arrogant Republican majority from the Capitol. At least is would make great “reality TV.”

Our lame duck president whines about those nasty Democrats who, for “political reasons” are undermining the (sorely mis-named) Patriot Act. Never mind the fact that this very same man endorsed the very same legislation for “political reasons.” Don’t look at the man behind the curtain, Dorothy!

I love this quote:

“For partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up,” Bush told reporters, with 19 federal prosecutors by his side. “The enemy has not gone away; they’re still there, and I expect Congress to understand that we’re still at war and they’ve got to give us the tools necessary to win this war.”

This administration has excelled at drawing partisan lines in the proverbial sand. For all his talk about “the enemy” never once has he defined just whom the enemy is. Is it Saddam? No, we got him already. Is it Osama? Knock Knock. Whose there? Osama. Osama who? Osama’s got yo mama. No: the real emeny is Democracy. those damn democrats think the rabble ought to have a say in national decisions, and good, god-fearing republicans know better. Corporations should run the country. And the rest of the world, too. Specifically those corporations beholden to republican dealmakers and in whose shares republican congressmen hold. We’re still at war. Even I can’t deny that fact. But why are we at war, and why are we still at war? Oh, what tools are necessary? Body armor or body bags?

And for all of you who still support our war, don’t DeLay, Jack. Sign up!