Tannishblog

We all know the story The Emperor Has No Clothes as a cautionary tale of the sycophantic entourage and the harm done therein. In that tale, it took a commoner to set things right. People who need to focus on survival have no time for such nonsense.

American’s Excellent Iraqi Adventure is just like that. While our President keeps strutting along the "We can win" parade route, people cleaning up after the menagerie see the reality of the situation. And it’s very much like cleaning up after the elephants.

But our would-be Emperor is acting a new part these days - the Cheshire Cat - as he tries his best to fade away from the consequences of his hubris. As Georgie Anne Geyer has it, our man the warmonger is leaking relevance as the real movers are being highlighted. Ms Geyer points out recent changes in the administration that signal a lessening of presidential clout: The virtual beheading of Donald Rumsfeld; the congressional turnover; George’s absence at the Gridiron dinner; even the softening stance of the Dominatrix of Foreign Policy, Condi Rice. Add in decaying public support and stress fractures of the US military, and no wonder our Decider(tm) has decided to fade away.

 Soon all that will be seen is a pair of beady eyes blinking in confusion. That and an empty suit.

Its high time governments of the world append the Endangered Species list to include humans. I’m serious! We are the Next Great Disaster waiting to happen.

Muslims have a 20-year plan to take over the United States. Many in America believe its our right to seek global imperialism. Some tie that in with a religious mandate. Christians are more militant as they anticipate Armageddon (brought about by their belief in the End of Times - a self-fulfilling prophesy.) Climate changes is already rampant. The deserts will grow as the seas rise. Oil production, the base of our society, has peaked, threatening whole economies.  Genocide occurs unchecked in the poorest parts of the world, as the fight for dwindling resources escalates. Soon this will occur in other regions. Nuclear proliferation is still happening despite the dearth of news items on the subject. More small nations have them, and some of them are hostile to America (imagine that!)

More and more rational, intelligent people are forming questions about the fate of mankind. The average American’s I meet can’t help but wonder if the Christian prophesies they’ve grown up with are imminent. Yes, people have been wondering this for ever, but each decade there’s more evidence accumulating. Alfred Nobel saw this coming a century ago. These aren’t your stereotypical bearded ragamuffin ravings.

So, I think it would be prescient to add humans to an endangered species list in small hope of someone at a bureaucratic level taking notice and trying to address the issue. A slim chance, I know, but a slim change may be all we have left.

Happy Easter!

For those of you contemplating a huge meal in honor of the gruesome death of a Jewish rabble-rouser and his subsequent mysterious disappearance, please remember, as the saying goes, "He Died For Your Sins."

This simple yet unsubstantiated claim is ambiguous: Did he die to absolve us of past sins, thereby cleansing humanity of its depravity, or did he die to pave the way to a continuation of sins, compounded by a deific belief in this peaceful man as a reason for violence and by technological advances in warfare? Much ill has been perpetrated in the name of Jesus. Much good has been done, as well, but the ill lasts longer.

 Jesus Christ, by all accounts, was a peaceful, tolerant man. More of a political advocate that a religious figure, he bucked the trend of his time and caused the Roman government some consternation. For this, he died a gruesome death, a public spectacle for political gain. What humanity has done to him since is even more frightening. Whole nations have been destroyed because they didn’t see the need to convert to Christianity. Just ask any of the vestiges of the great Sioux nation, for one example. The list is too long to enumerate here.

 Our president believes in Jesus. He leapt to the forefront of the world stage propelled by his stated religiosity: "I listen to a higher father," he said. I wonder whom he meant? Not long after he stole the presidency through illegal vote-purging in Florida, he was presented with a world-class disaster from which to make a name for himself and to show the world what he’s made of. He did all of that.

Our born-again Christian president twisted truth in order to go to war on a nation unconnected to the aforementioned tragedy, causing repercussions not limited to bankrupting the richest nation on earth, killing tens-of-thousands of innocent people, destroying a nation and killing or damaging thousands of young Americans, their families, and ensuring a continued drain on the national economy in the form of providing for the maimed soldiers and their families. The full effect of this disaster will be felt for at least a generation. So much for believing in the Prince of Peace.

Is this what it means to "listen to a higher father"? Is this what it means when people say Christ dies for our sins? I didn’t work; we continue to sin, but now we can do it in Jesus’ name. Any true follower of Jesus would put a stop to war. Any true follower of Jesus would hold accountable the people responsible for destroying so much for lies. :Thou Shall Not Kill", yet this man does. "Thou Shall Not Steal", yet this man and his allies are stealing the sovereignty of a proud people only to steal its oil. That covers covetousness as well. "Thou Shall Not Lie", yet that’s all we hear from our administration.

Are these actions of a Christian nature? Did Jesus die for this? Or perhaps the ill-fated Jew died so you can eat Ham at Passover? Bon Appetite.

The papers are screaming it: Barack Obama has money! Because the papers all feature this tidbit, Americans will reflexively believe that this is important. That he is young, fresh, idealistic and charismatic is no so important. What matters is that he has the money to take on the Clintonian machine.

I’m sick of America’s money-centricity. What good has it done our nation or our world that every facet of life in this country is measured in dollars? What good has it done you personally? Be honest!

 A Canadian friend of mine mentioned recently how, in America, "everything is money." Say what you want about our northern neighbors, but she was right. Status equals money. Marketing determines status. Sales determine jobs, and jobs determine salaries which determine what status symbols one might afford.

The car I drive tells others about my economic strata, as does the neighborhood in which I live, as does my choice of clothing, my hobbies, my job… From these cultural cues, strangers decide how to treat with me, how to behave. Opportunities are given or withheld entirely due to perceived social-economic criteria and not based upon evaluation of the capabilities of a person. Money drives this, and in America, there is no escape from the ingrained discrimination built into this system.

In America, money is all - money is God. We are, to a certain degree, enslaved by our addiction to money. The freedom that the political right love to espouse is relative to how much we tow the line of cultural expectations, and not at all an expression of true freedom. This is on many levels a necessary trade-off, as humankind has continually proved it is incapable of living with itself. So a set of rules that limit chaos and anarchy an unlimited free choice is necessary.

Money sets that limit. It determines who is ruled and who makes the rules. If one is to join the latter class, one must adhere to the machinery of moneymaking, and give a substantial portion of their freedom to the mechanism. To date, this is the best system humans have produced to purge the world from the failings of humanity. It’s not perfect. I would argue if any system devised by us can ever reach perfection.

But in America, the only nation which I am familiar enough with to comment upon, we have exceeded the necessity of such a monetary measuring stick and taken things to an extreme. Our culture, for all it’s homage to a Judeo-Christian Godhead, worships wealth above all. As a result, we have become dysfunctional members of a global society, of a world brimming in humanity and stunted by the false perception of gaining happiness through material acquisition. The spirituality assumed by the founders of the constitution, the religiosity they fought for and took to be a inherent part of the human experience, has evaporated.

That is why the news services make such noise over a presidential candidate’s coffers. It is more important than the man or his message, and will be given more airtime as the contest continues. In this century, more perhaps than any other, power is commodity - just another thing to buy and sell. The common denominator of America is $.

The following is  from Sara at Orcinus:

Hate crime is a low-level form of terrorism designed to disenfranchise, stifle, and ultimately remove certain people from the public sphere by forcing them to erect imaginary boundaries of fear in their own heads. It causes people to change their behavior, shrink their horizons, and stop participating fully in their own lives. Suddenly, there are places — the synagogue, the clinic, downtown after dark, professional conferences, the comments threads that form the living rooms of their own online homes — that they can no longer approach with a feeling of acceptance, belonging, and safety.

This is from Michele Malkin’s site:

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to “report suspicious activity.”

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: “If you see something, say something.”

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing “scholars.”

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding, and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderate clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about “profiling” or “Islamophobia.”

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Pass it on.

Thus goes the battle cry of the Paranoid Pandemic. Google shows a measly 1,730,000 iterations of this meme-of-madness. The first several pages illustrated the depths of the Wingnut Echo Chamber. Truly astounding how many otherwise healthy Americans are willing to sell their liberty for the freedom to cower in fear behind the shield of racism. Or, and the General says:

Dear traitorous Brownislamunistofascist, Homoislamunistofascist, Femislamunistofascist, Poorislamunistofascist, JehovahWitnessislamunististfascist, Hebrislamunistofascist, and/or Libislamunistofascist,You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.I am Michelle’s hood.

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am Michelle’s hood.

In the spirit of good blogmanship and in fear of the holy wrath of the General’s Glorious Conservative Christian Cultural Revolutionaries, I cannot post the attendant picture of the Divine Miss M in a very fashionable white silk, pointed KKK hoodie.

I’m sure everyone will be wearing one soon. Make them red-white and blue, though, and sell them at Wal-Mart.

The 2008 Presidential campaign is heating up. Newspapers, desperate for diversions from the horrors of reality, are queuing up the contenders for and early slaughter. The few contenders there are, that is. MSM is salivation with anticipation of the as-yet-realized pit fights and slander mongering that all good American elections cycles require.

There is one candidate that probably will get little air time, however. Entrenched good-old-boy, hand-in-pocket journalism will pass her by. You shouldn’t, though. Susie Flynn is running for president on a single-board platform. She wants to help the (over) nine million children in the US without health insurance. there is no party affiliation mentioned, but I would guess she’s a liberal. Please visit her site, maybe email her your encouragement, and sign her petition. Her goal is lofty: nine million signatures. She’s collected over 14,000 so far!

Another chance to show the scarecrows in congress how quickly the grass roots grow! Support Susie, send a message, let anyone who cares to look know what is REALLY on the minds of Americans. Our children are our future. The future is NOW!

Apologies to the makers of the famous powdered H2O additive:

That must be good stuff they pass around the sauna stones at Republican National-whatever gatherings. To say it’s Electric Kool-aid doesn’t cover it; the Merry Pranksters gang got some compassion from their experiments. People like John McCain and Mike Pence (R-IN) are drinking Crack Cocaine Kool-aid to think that a staged, one-hour "tour" of the Shorja market in Baghdad was anything like a normal shopping trip.

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

I regularly don body armor, hire sharpshooters and a full company of soldiers with Humvees when I go to the market. Apparently so does Mike Pence:

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

I’m glad I don’t live in Indianapolis. Meanwhile, in Realityopolis, the Iraqi merchants view yesterday’s pageant differently:

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

I’m sure the impact of such high-and-mighty Americans will make no difference to the beleaguered Iraqis, but this silliness may have profound impact on John McCain’s electability quotient. Pass the juice, son!

Four years ago and then some, the Bushniks created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out of fear and the need to look like something was being done about their fear. Amorphous and veiled behind a blackout of news coverage and secrecy, this huge addition to our already vast bureaucratic behemoth has

Just for giggles, I searched the following phrase in Google to see all the great and wonderful things the Wizards of DHS have been doing for our country:

"What has the Department of Homeland Security done for you?"

This is the resulting page; one article that has little actual substance. I tried a different tack:

"accomplishments of the department of homeland security"

Much to my bemused un-surprise, the Greatest Search Engine Yet Created, after years of aggregating the collective knowledge of the Known Universe, found one page of entries. A grand total of seven items, most involving testimonies of DHS officials to congress after only the first year. At least one entry is a duplicate. Nothing since then.

Has congress not bothered to monitor the fledgling agency? Perhaps the information is part of the mountain of classified documents our secretive, paranoid administration holds so tightly. Whatever the cause, information about the DHS is not the the delectation of the masses.

I ask this: What has the DHS done for you? Name five clear accomplishments of the Department of Homeland Security? I can only think of one. The politically expedient and curiously convenient thermometer of Terror Alerts. (did you know in the new Windows Vista sidebar gadgetry you can get the latest terror alert downloaded right to your desktop?) It’s not like the DHS has hammered out a smooth protocol for airport security. Besides absorbing long-standing governmental agencies like a cancer gobbles up cells, or putting spin to the impossible and impractical "problems" the DHS was supposed to be tackling, (PDF) is there anything concrete the agency has done for the People of the United States?

Well? Do you feel safer?

What is that sound… Oh. Crickets.